To see dwarf mistletoe seeds is to experience them. These are not typical seeds that gently drop from a mature plant. Rather, they are explosive — forcibly ejected from their fruits at high rates of speed. I remember learning about this in college: that dwarf mistletoe seeds can travel up to 60 mph and fly more than 60 feet from their hosts (Hinds et al., 1963). This process is triggered by internal heat production (called thermogenesis) within the mistletoe fruit — something that's never been observed in another plant (Rolena et al., 2015). It wasn't until many years after college that I actually experienced the phenomenon for myself. I remember driving along...

Reposted from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources news

Although individual extreme weather events cannot yet be reliably linked to global climate change, the warming planet may be contributing to recent weather disasters in California. Across the state, 129 million trees died as a result of the drought of 2011-2016, many of them in the Sierra Nevada. Last fall, the worst wildfires in the state's history whipped through wildland areas and neighborhoods, and then were followed by a January deluge and deadly mudslide.

Climate change is also impacting agriculture. The winter chill that farmers rely on to re-boot cherry,...

Reposted from the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network blog

Reposted from UC Berkeley's CNR News