Bohart Museum hosts afternoon of insect fun
Lady beetles may be the best known, but species of beetles cover a wide spectrum. Learn about some of them Sunday at UC Davis. Kathy Morrison
Beetles are more than lady bugs — as wonderful as those spotted insect stars are. Beetles form the order Coleoptera, the largest and most diverse group of insects, with more than 250,000 described species.
This weekend, the researchers at the Bohart Museum of Entomology will show visitors a sample of the amazing beetle species that inhabit our world.
The museum on the UC Davis campus holds its first open house of 2023 this Sunday, Jan. 22, from 1 to 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. (Parking on Sundays is free, too.)
This is a family-friendly event, including an arts-and-crafts activity involving a drawing of a carrion beetle.
The Bohart Museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, on campus. It houses more than 8 million insect specimens, as well as a live petting zoo. (Ever petted a Madagascar hissing cockroach?)
UC Davis graduate student and researcher Tracie Hayes (the artist of the carrion beetle) will be a presenter Sunday, along with beetle specialist Fran Keller, biology professor at Folsom Lake College, and Cal Fire bark beetle specialist Curtis Ewing.
For more on the Bohart Museum, go to https://bohart.ucdavis.edu/
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Garden Checklist for week of Jan. 12
Once the winds die down, it’s good winter gardening weather with plenty to do:
* Prune, prune, prune. Now is the time to cut back most deciduous trees and shrubs. The exceptions are spring-flowering shrubs such as lilacs.
* Now is the time to prune fruit trees. (The exceptions are apricot and cherry trees, which are susceptible to a fungus that causes dieback. Save them until summer.) Clean up leaves and debris around the trees to prevent the spread of disease.
* Prune roses, even if they’re still trying to bloom. Strip off any remaining leaves, so the bush will be able to put out new growth in early spring.
* Clean up leaves and debris around your newly pruned roses and shrubs. Put down fresh mulch or bark to keep roots cozy.
* After the wind stops, apply horticultural oil to fruit trees to control scale, mites and aphids. Oils need 24 hours of dry weather after application to be effective.
* This is also the time to spray a copper-based fungicide to peach and nectarine trees to fight leaf curl. (The safest effective fungicides available for backyard trees are copper soap -- aka copper octanoate -- or copper ammonium, a fixed copper fungicide. Apply either of these copper products with 1% horticultural oil to increase effectiveness.)
* When forced bulbs sprout, move them to a cool, bright window. Give them a quarter turn each day so the stems will grow straight.
* Browse through seed catalogs and start making plans for spring and summer.
* Divide daylilies, Shasta daisies and other perennials.
* Cut back and divide chrysanthemums.
* Plant bare-root roses, trees and shrubs.
* Transplant pansies, violas, calendulas, English daisies, snapdragons and fairy primroses.
* In the vegetable garden, plant fava beans, head lettuce, mustard, onion sets, radicchio and radishes.
* Plant bare-root asparagus and root divisions of rhubarb.
* In the bulb department, plant callas, anemones, ranunculus and gladioli for bloom from late spring into summer.
* Plant blooming azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons. If you’re shopping for these beautiful landscape plants, you can now find them in full flower at local nurseries.
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