With hot, dry winds, the question came up this week about whether the hot temperatures or the low humidity would affect pollen viability. It turns out that both day and night time temperatures will affect pollen tube growth.
Female Valley carpenter bees are solid black--except when they're foraging around passion flowers. Then they're black and yellow--the yellow being the color of the pollen transferred to their thorax. Beautiful? Absolutely.
Western tarnished plant bug (Lygus hesperus), also known as lygus bug, is a major pest of strawberries in California. Ideal environmental conditions and the diversity and abundance of crop and weed hosts that support the pest contributed to its increasing populations.
Strawberry field with spider mite infestation. Plants in the lower part of the photo are stunted due to twospotted spider mite damage (Photo by Surendra Dara) Multiple species of spider mites infest strawberries in California.
From the UC Cooperative Extension Monterey County Crop Notes newsletter (March/April 2014) Excellent weed control is essential for economically producing cilantro and parsley. Both crops have had various weed control challenges over the last few years.
We've been getting reports of coast live oak decline along the coast, well, here's one of the causes: RIVERSIDE, Calif. A fungus associated with the western oak bark beetle is causing a decline in coast live oak trees in Southern California by spreading foamy bark canker disease.
Whenever you look at the Matilija poppy, you think of a fried egg. White, crepelike flowers (the egg whites) circle a cluster of gold stamens (the yolk).
We had a pretty mild winter, in spite of the freeze damage that occurred in the Central Valley. Now we are seeing what happens when there's not enough chilling to break bud. There is erratic flowering and leaf out. This can be quite pronounced in such trees as peach and apricots, apples and pears.
What a perfect match when a Gulf Fritillary butterfly touches down on a blanket flower. They're both reddish-orange and showy. Last weekend we spotted a Gulf Fritillary butterfly (Agraulis vanillae) land momentarily on a blanket flower (Gaillardia), in our bee garden.
