Rangelands

A 19th century nursery rhyme insists that little girls are made of "sugar and spice and everything nice." They're not, of course. And neither are butterflies always "pretty." They can be "pretty gross," according to a delightful children's picture book, "Butterflies Are Pretty...

Poison oak is a common native plant in California, growing everywhere from oak woodlands to urban parks. Chances are, you or someone you know has suffered from a rash due to poison oak at some point. The best way to avoid exposure to poison oak is knowing how to identify it.

by Michael I.

It's early morning and the spider is hungry. It snares a honey bee foraging for pollen and nectar in a patch of Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia rotundifola) in a Vacaville pollinator garden. The spider slides down the sticky web, kills its prey with a venomous bite, and begins to eat.

You don't want to "get the red out" when a flameskimmer dragonfly visits your garden. You want to let Big Red to stay in. This male flameskimmer hung out in our pollinator garden in Vacaville on July 3 for a little over five hours.

The UCCE Stanislaus County Master Gardener Program offered a timely online class on how to save water in your garden and home. It included science-based information climate change, where our fresh water comes from and how we can be more sustainable in our water use.

California has abundant wildlands forests, rangeland, open areas, wildlife refuges and national, state, and local parks that need protection from invasive plants.

This is not something you see every day.

ANR Environmental Horticulture (EH) academics develop and extend research-based information to producers and end-users of landscape, nursery, turfgrass, and floriculture plants.

We're used to admiring street art that showcases such iconic insects as lady beetles, dragonflies and butterflies, but carpenter ants? Carpenter ants? If you walk over the Ulatis Creek Bridge, Vacaville, to enter Andrews Park for the Fourth of July celebration on Sunday, you may be surprised.