Rangelands

So here's this immature praying mantis, a Stagmomantis limbata, perched on a narrow-leafed milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis, in a Vacaville pollinator garden. She's camouflaged quite well. She's as green and thin as the leaves. Me: "Hey, Ms. Mantis, whatcha doin'?" Ms.

Nutsedges are aggressive and persistent weeds that commonly infest lawns, vegetable and flower gardens, and landscapes. These perennial sedges are a problem in lawns because they grow faster than turfgrasses and result in non-uniform turf.

Thought for the day... Every time we see a honey bee "posing perfectly" on a Gaillardia, commonly known as blanket flower, we think of a quote by internationally known honey bee geneticist, Robert E. Page Jr.

So there it was, an exotic-looking bug resting against a freshly painted red bollard at a Vacaville supermarket. It was not there to shop. Or to stop vehicles from crashing into the store or colliding with shoppers. It was there, I suspect, because of the pheromone-like scent of the fresh paint.

Have you ever seen the digger bees on the sandy cliffs of Bodega Head, Sonoma County? if you hike a short distance up a meandering trail, you'll see a landscape of turrets, the work of solitary, ground-nesting digger bees, Anthophora bomboides standfordina. The nests remind us tiny sandcastles.

Internationally known honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page, Jr. is spotlighted in the current issue of American Entomologist in Marlin E. Rice's popular Legends feature. Titled "Robert E. Page, Jr.

How can you interest your children in insects?

The week of June 17-23 is National Pollinator Week, which celebrates the vital winged creatures we are so dependent on to pollinate most of the flowering plants in the world.

Costumed as river creatures with papier mch heads and dressed as the Army Corps of Engineers, Cleo Woelfle Hazard and a performance art group called The Water Underground dazzled the biennial Bay Delta Science Conference a few years ago. Woelfle Hazard then a Ph.D.

Bees, butterflies, beetles, birds and bats. What do they have in common? Skipping the alliteration for a moment, they're all pollinators. Honey bees grab the most attention, of course, and they do the bulk of the work. But so do bumble bees and other native bees.