Rangelands

Low-lying morning clouds in Southern California coastal areas form the predictable "June Gloom" in early summer - at least, they used to.

"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble, it's the things we do know that just ain't so."--American humorist Artemus Ward (1834-1867).

It was billed as the second annual Butterfly Summit, hosted last Saturday by Annie's Annuals and Perennials in Richmond. But a yellow-faced bumble bee, Bombus vosnesenskii, foraging on Anchusa azurea (a member of the borage family), apparently didn't like the focus on butterflies.

The natural magic of grazing at the Table Mountain Ecological Reserve in Butte County is made possible by running cattle in targeted areas for carefully planned periods of time, reported Ashiah Scharaga in the Chico News & Review.

Nutgrass, also called nutsedge, could easily be one of the top 5 nuisance weeds gardeners deal with in the garden and landscape. While we don't know that for sure, we do know that nutsedge is a very challenging weed to control.

Timing is everything. Especially when it comes to bumble bee colonies. Postdoctoral scholar Rosemary Malfi of the Neal Williams lab, University of California, Davis, will speak on Timing Is Everything: Bumble Bee Colony Performance in Response to Seasonal Variation in Resources at 4:10 p.m.

Growing mandarins in the foothills often produces a tantalizing crop of fruit that delights even the pickiest of connoisseurs, however, it is not produced without difficulty.

At a recent beginning farming workshop, that was the exact question that was posed to an earnest group of beginning farmers. Many of you may have similar questions so this post answers a few of them.

How's the butterfly population faring in north-central California? What do you plant to attract and sustain them? You can find out at the second annual Butterfly Summit, a free event hosted by Annie's Annuals and Perennials in Richmond. The event takes place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Congratulations to doctoral student and pollination ecologist Maureen Page of the Neal Williams lab, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology! She's the recipient of a prestigious three-year fellowship, a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, for her research proposal...