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California, a western U.S. state, stretches from the Mexican border along the Pacific for nearly 900 miles. Its terrain includes cliff-lined beaches, redwood forest, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Central Valley farmland and the Mojave Desert. Common California trees include: Valley Oak (Quercus lobata) California Sycamore (Platanus racemosa) California Black Walnut (juglans hindsii) Fremont Cottonwood (Populus … Read more
The genus name Mimosa comes from the Greek mimos meaning “mimic” or “mime” in reference to the leaves of some species which move when touched, seeming to mimic consciousness. Admired for its fernlike foliage and strikingly fluffy, pink-tinged flowers, the mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) has been planted as a garden ornamental in the United States since the … Read more
Chestnuts are a group of hardwood, deciduous trees, native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Most chestnut species are tall trees, commonly with furrowed bark when mature. All chestnut types have oblong leaves with serrated edges. Most male flowers are borne in long upright catkins; female flowers are arranged singly or in clusters at the base of short … Read more
A butterfly is a winged insect with scales on its wings. Butterflies come in a variety of colors, sizes, and patterns. It is estimated that there are around 20,000 different butterfly species. These different types of butterflies live all around the world. In all ecosystems, butterflies are essential to plants that depend on cross-pollination. They visit flowering … Read more
Spiders are arachnids, a class of arthropods that also includes scorpions, mites, and ticks. There are more than 45,000 known species of spiders, found in habitats all over the world. There’s a spider with a cartoonish butt, spiders that can jump on demand and cannibal spiders that look like pelicans. Spiders vary greatly in terms of color from … Read more
Butterflies possess some of the most striking color displays found in nature. As they fly from flower to flower gathering nectar, their brightly colored wings seem to shimmer and change colors before your eyes. Butterflies actually get their colors from two different sources: ordinary (or pigmented) color and structural color. The ordinary color comes from normal chemical pigments that absorb certain … Read more
Butterflies and moths have many things in common, including scales that cover their bodies and wings. In other words, there is no real taxonomic difference between butterflies and moths. Both are classified or belong to order Lepidoptera (from the Greek lepis meaning scale and pteron meaning wing). This order contains over 100 families of insects worldwide, some … Read more
Butterflies are nearly worldwide in their distribution. There are about 17,500 species of butterflies in the world, and around 750 species in the United States. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. Research has shown that color reflection from butterfly wings are caused by not from pigment, but from tiny scaffolding within … Read more
How many body parts does a butterfly have? Like other insects, moths and butterflies have four wings, six legs, and a jointed body divided into three sections—head, thorax, and abdomen. Perhaps the most distinctive physical features of the butterfly are its club-tipped antennae and its habit of holding the wings vertically over the back when at … Read more
A caterpillar is the larval stage of a moth or butterfly. It is the second part of their four-stage life cycle: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Caterpillars are typically voracious feeders and many of them are among the most serious of agricultural pests. Caterpillars of most species eat plant material (often leaves), but not all; some (about 1%) eat insects, … Read more