I am grateful to give these young adults a chance to slow down and be with the natural world as they help me weed and mulch and plant. One of them told me recently that he relies on this work to keep him centered enough to study, and the fatigue from working in fresh air is helpin...
“There is such an interesting relationship between the natives and the insects, that have co-evolved in Southern California. If you don’t plant native milkweed, for example, you won’t get the California Monarch caterpillars. Mama butterfly will only lay her eggs on species that her baby ...
A patch of milkweed teems with life, and our pursuits to protect a single caterpillar invite us to explore that. Asclepias –also known as the milkweeds – is a genus consisting of around 140 species, 72 of which are native to the United States and Canada. Alaska and Hawaii are the ...
Death on a Milkweed Posted onJune 3, 2014byRandy Tindall Walking out of our yard today to walk Bonita the Beagle, I glanced quickly over a few young milkweeds growing on our curb next to the street. Something under one of the leaves caught my eye. This, to be exact: ...
Milkweed and other stems waiting for spring. Because, you see, we have chosen a different standard of beauty than most yard-viewers have been conditioned to see sinceFrederick Law Olmstead, born 200 years ago this year, decided that proper urban landowners should emulate the British upper classe...
South Coast Chapter of the California Native Plant Society Native Plant Sale,10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Madrona Marsh Nature Center. The sale will include lots of narrowleaf milkweed plants (Asclepias fascicularis).chapters.cnps.org/southcoast ...
or maybe the fact that the Cape is getting built up quickly, shrinking their habitat even more is really the underlying cause. Hopefully not, as this has been a banner year for one of their host plants, Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Despite rabbit grazing I have a hundred or so ...
perhaps we should drop the word weed from some of our best native plants. Joe Pye Weed, Swamp Milkweed, Butterfly Milkweed, I could go on and on… The muggles aren’t keen on planting weed. Well… I guess some are keen on one weed, but that’s a whole different plant, and topic...
In the milkweed specialist Danaus plexippus (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), mortality was highest in first instar larvae (ranging from 39 to 100% depending on plant species) and was dependent on leaf tissue quality, especially defensive chemical concentrations [24]. Although we did not directly test ...
diversity Article Insects in the City: Does Remnant Native Habitat Influence Insect Order Distributions? Mani Shrestha 1,2,3,* , Jair E. Garcia 1 , Freya Thomas 4, Scarlett R. Howard 5 , Justin H. J. Chua 1, Thomas Tscheulin 6, Alan Dorin 2 , Anders Nielsen 7 and Adrian G. Dyer...