Humboldt

Sidhu named UCCE vegetable crops advisor for Kern County Jaspreet Sidhu joined UCCE on Sept. 4, 2018, as the vegetable crops advisor for Kern County. Sidhu earned a Ph.D. in entomology from Louisiana State University and a M.S. in entomology and a B.S.

The California Natural Resources Agency released California's Fourth Climate Change Assessment today (Monday, Aug. 27), at http://www.ClimateAssessment.ca.gov. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources scientists contributed substantially to the report.

Northern California cooks are encouraged to enter their best quinoa recipes in a contest next month co-sponsored by the UC Cooperative Extension Master Food Preservers Program, reported Heather Shelton in the Eureka Times-Standard.

With all the fire activity and displaced personnel last fall, I would never have guessed we would already be back in that same place. But with the Carr fire and now the River fire, Shasta, Mendocino, and Lake County UCCE offices have had to close and personnel evacuated.

We all know that fire is one of the oldest and most powerful tools that humans have. For millennia, we have used fire to improve our home livesfood, winter warmth, etc.

Humboldt's Lily (Liliumhumboldtii) is a plant endemic to CA and is considered rare. It was named after naturalist and explorer, Alexandervon Humboldt. Its flowers typically bloom around June. There are two subspecies.Ssp.humbodtii is found primarily in the Sierra foothills andssp.

Professor Rick Karban of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, author of the landmark book, Plant Sensing and Communication (University of Chicago Press), says that plants can eavesdrop, sense danger in the environment, and can distinguish friend from foe.

If you're a plant and an insect is attacking you, you can communicate your stress to nearby plants as a way to alert them about potential danger--very similar to how animals communicate or respond to predators.

A baby bird's gape is the huge open part of the mouth, often brightly colored, it is thought, to induce feeding from adults. Gape can also be used as a verb to describe begging behavior.

If you were in the Northeast this holiday you were probably seeking a reprieve from the heat and humidity to watch the fireworks. I'm not sure the person who climbed the base of the Statue of Liberty had that in mind, but maybe. In my part of California, we couldn't have asked for better weather.