originally posted: March 26, 2003 | by chelsie

Soft scales (Homoptera: Coccidae) are dreadful to anyone who cultivates plants, but a nursery or fruit grower is faced losing everything they own. Young scales disperse to other plants by the wind. The insects pierce a plant to feed from the phloem tissues. Safely hidden under their shells, scales feed and reproduce with impunity. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 19, 2003 | by chelsie

Soft brown scale (Coccus hesperidum Linnaeus) is a common nuisance pest on citrus and ornamental plants. Each soft scale is covered with a chitinous body wall, a dome-shaped armor making the insect impervious to changes in the environment, attack from most insects, and pesticides. The scales simply "hunker-down" and wait until outside conditions are normal. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 12, 2003 | by chelsie

The characters seem as if they stepped out of an Ed Wood Jr. movie. The ghouls are red imported fire ants (Solenopsis invicta Buren). Even the name fits the bad movie genre: solen- "pipe", -opsis "appearance", and invicta "invincible". Loosely, very loosely, translated: the "invincible pipe-face". [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 5, 2003 | by chelsie

Between 1933 and 1945, a small ant from South America was introduced either in Mobile, Alabama or Pensacola, Florida. Since then, the ant has spread through the south from North Carolina to Texas, and recently to New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 26, 2003 | by chelsie

Crickets and katydids mark the changing seasons; a fact not lost on the Chinese. According to Xing-Bao Jin (Chinese Cricket Culture, 1994), "Jing-Zhe" or "waking of the insects" notified farmers of the time to start plowing the fields; at the song of "Cu Zhi" or "encourage weaving" in the house, it was time to weave enough cloth for winter. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 19, 2003 | by chelsie

Jack-in-the-pulpits (Arisaema triphyllum (L.) Schott) are dioecious; staminate (male) and pistillate (female) flowers are borne on separate plants. Juvenile plants do not flower, the next growth stage are staminate plants. A few years growing under optimal conditions, the plants build up enough reserves and the sex changes from staminate to pistillate. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 12, 2003 | by chelsie

The giant swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes Cramer) is native to tropical and subtropical North and South America, and frequently visits the temperate zones. During warm weather, the butterfly will migrate as far north as Quebec; other than a few odd sightings, they appear to follow the river systems. Those that stray too far north leave their next generation stranded; the eggs and larvae will not have enough time to develop into adults and head south before killed by winter. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 5, 2003 | by chelsie

The redheaded ladybug (Cryptolaemus montrouzieri Mulsant) is a native of Australia. The adult is only 3 to 4 millimeters, but the larval stage can be as big as 1.3 centimeters. During its lifetime this redhead eats voraciously. The ladybug was introduced to Alameda, California in 1891 by Albert Koebele to control citrus mealybugs. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 29, 2003 | by chelsie

The pink or hibiscus mealybug (Maconellicoccus hirsutus Green) is native to the tropics and subtropics of Africa, Asia, and northern Australia. This insect was accidentally introduced to the Caribbean in 1994 and to southern Florida in 2002. Although it prefers to feed on plants in the hibiscus family, the mealybug is willing to attack many other species--grapes, plums, citrus--it has been found on 125 different fruit and ornamental plants. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 22, 2003 | by chelsie

The Apiaceae [a pi a see ee] is the family of parsley, carrots, and celery. It is also the family of some of the most toxic plants known like poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and water dropwort (Oenanthe crocata). Most members of the family contain at least one class of poisons, furanocoumarins. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 15, 2003 | by chelsie

There are an estimated one hundred species in the genus Lathyrus--the sweet peas, grasspeas, and vetches. The plants are legumes and related to the edible garden pea (Pisum sativum) and the beans (Phaseolus spp. and Glycine max). But Lathyrus are seldom eaten since at least nine of the species are known to contain toxic amino acids. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 8, 2003 | by chelsie

Bees are classified in the Superfamily Apoidae. According to the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, there are 7 or 8 families (depending upon the authority), forty-five genera, and at least 1000 species. Unfortunately, the uninformed consider bees a pest because of their aculei (singular, aculeus) or stingers; the uninterested do not think of bees at all. Bees are disappearing. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 1, 2003 | by chelsie

In 1505, Portuguese sailors discovered the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. The island uninhabited by humans had a unique set of plants and animals. Among the animals of Mauritius was a columbiforme, a large flightless dove relative. Weighing up to 23 kilograms (50 pounds), the dodos were fresh meat after weeks at sea. [Click here to read more...]