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Showy Milkweed
''Asclepias speciosa'' is a milky-sapped perennial plant in the dogbane family ( Apocynaceae), known commonly as the showy milkweed and is found in the western half of North America. Description This flowering plant is a hairy, erect perennial growing up to in height. The pointed, elongate, simple, entire leaves are about long and arranged oppositely on stalks. Milky sap is released when the leaves or stems are bruised or cut. The flowers are about wide, hirsute, pale pink to pinkish-purple, and occur in dense umbellate cymes. Their corollas are reflexed and the central flower parts, five hoods with prominent hooks, form a star shape. The fruit is a rough follicle about long and filled with many flat oval seeds, each with silky hairs. This species flowers from May through August. Many other species in the genus '' Asclepias'' are toxic, particularly to livestock. Distribution and habitat This species is native to the western half of North America, including British ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Torrey
John Torrey (August 15, 1796 – March 10, 1873) was an American botany, botanist, chemist, and physician. Throughout much of his career, he was a teacher of chemistry, often at multiple universities, while he also pursued botanical work, focusing on the flora of North America. His most renowned works include studies of the New York flora, the Mexican Boundary, the Pacific railroad surveys, and the uncompleted ''Flora of North America''. Biography Torrey was born in New York City, the second child of Capt. William and Margaret (née Nichols) Torrey.Robbins, C. C. (1968). John Torrey (1796–1873), His Life & Times. ''Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club''. Vol. 95, No. Nov. 6–Dec. 1968, 515–645. Torrey Botanical Club, New York. He showed a fondness for mechanics, and at one time planned to become a machinist. When he was 15 or 16, his father received an appointment to the state prison at Greenwich Village, New York, where he was tutored by Amos Eaton, then a pri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cascade Range
The Cascade Range or Cascades is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California. It includes both non-volcanic mountains, such as the North Cascades, and the notable volcanoes known as the High Cascades. The small part of the range in British Columbia is referred to as the Canadian Cascades or, locally, as the Cascade Mountains. The latter term is also sometimes used by Washington residents to refer to the Washington section of the Cascades in addition to North Cascades, the more usual U.S. term, as in North Cascades National Park. The highest peak in the range is Mount Rainier in Washington at . part of the Pacific Ocean's Ring of Fire, the ring of volcanoes and associated mountains around the Pacific Ocean. All of the eruptions in the contiguous United States over the last 200 years have been from Cascade volcanoes. The two most recent were Lassen Peak from 1914 to 1921 and a major ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Academies Press
The US National Academies Press (NAP) was created to publish the reports issued by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Research Council. It publishes nearly 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in the sciences. The NAP's stated mission is seemingly self-contradictory: to disseminate as widely as possible the works of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and to be financially self-sustaining through sales. This mission has led to great experimentation in openness regarding online publishing. The National Academy Press (as it was known in 1993) was the first self-sustaining publisher to make its material available on the Web, for free, in an open access model. By 1997, 1000 reports were available as sequential page images (starting with i, then ii, then iii, then iv...), with a minimal navigational envelope. Their experience up to 1998 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western US
The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the West'' changed. Before about 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. The frontier moved westward and eventually the lands west of the Mississippi River were considered the West. The U.S. Census Bureau's definition of the 13 westernmost states includes the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin to the Pacific Coast, and the mid-Pacific islands state, Hawaii. To the east of the Western United States is the Midwestern United States and the Southern United States, with Canada to the north, and Mexico to the south. The West contains several major biomes, including arid and semi-arid plateaus and plains, particularly in the American Southwest; forested mountains, including three major ranges, the Sierra Nevada ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous county in Oregon. Portland had a population of 652,503, making it the 26th-most populated city in the United States, the sixth-most populous on the West Coast, and the second-most populous in the Pacific Northwest, after Seattle. Approximately 2.5 million people live in the Portland metropolitan statistical area (MSA), making it the 25th most populous in the United States. About half of Oregon's population resides within the Portland metropolitan area. Named after Portland, Maine, the Oregon settlement began to be populated in the 1840s, near the end of the Oregon Trail. Its water access provided convenient transportation of goods, and the timber industry was a major force in the city's early economy. At the turn of the 20th century, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xerces Society
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (Xerces Society) is a non-profit environmental organization that focuses on the conservation of invertebrates considered to be essential to biological diversity and ecosystem health. It is named in honor of an extinct California butterfly, the Xerces blue (''Glaucopsyche xerces''). The Society collaborates with federal and state agencies including the US Department of Agriculture, as well as scientists, land managers, educators, and citizens to promote invertebrate conservation, applied research, advocacy, public outreach and education. Examples of Xerces Society activities include advocating for invertebrates and their habitats, petitioning for the designation of endangered status for applicable species such as the monarch butterfly, and public education projects. Ongoing projects include the rehabilitation of habitat for endangered species, public education about the importance of native pollinator A pollinator is an anima ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Butterfly Gardening
Butterfly gardening is a way to create, improve, and maintain habitat for lepidopterans including butterflies, skippers, and moths. Butterflies have four distinct life stages—egg, larva, chrysalis, and adult. In order to support and sustain butterfly populations, an ideal butterfly garden contains habitat for each life stage. Butterfly larvae, with some exceptions such as the carnivorous harvester (''Feniseca tarquinius''), consume plant matter and can be generalists or specialists. While butterflies like the painted lady (''Vanessa cardui'') are known to consume over 200 plants as caterpillars, other species like the monarch (''Danaus plexippus''), and the regal fritillary (''Speyeria idalia'') only consume plants in one genus, milkweed and violets, respectively. As adults, butterflies feed mainly on nectar, but they have also evolved to consume rotting fruit, tree sap, and even carrion. Supporting nectarivorous adult butterflies involves planting nectar plants of dif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monarch Watch
Monarch Watch is a volunteer-based citizen science organization that tracks the fall migration of the monarch butterfly. It is self-described as "a nonprofit education, conservation, and research program based at the University of Kansas that focuses on the monarch butterfly, its habitat, and its spectacular fall migration." Organization The informal organization is largely supported by teachers and students participating in "classroom projects, collaborative research" among other opportunities. Its founder and director is Orley R. "Chip" Taylor, a "world-renowned expert on butterflies and their migration patterns." The organization creates and distributes tags to place on monarch butterflies in order to track their migration path from Canada and the United States to south-central Mexico. The tagging method used is derived from the one that was developed by Canadian scientist, Fred Urquhart. The tagging process was adapted by Orley Taylor to minimize the damage to the butterflies. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queen Butterfly
The queen butterfly (''Danaus gilippus'') is a North and South American butterfly in the family Nymphalidae with a wingspan of . It is orange or brown with black wing borders and small white forewing spots on its dorsal wing surface, and reddish ventral wing surface fairly similar to the dorsal surface. The ventral hindwings have black veins and small white spots in a black border. The male has a black androconial scent patch on its dorsal hindwings. It can be found in meadows, fields, marshes, deserts, and at the edges of forests. This species is possibly a close relative to the similarly colored soldier butterfly (or tropical queen, '' D. eresimus''), in any case, it is not close to the plain tiger ('' D. chrysippus'', African queen) as was long believed. There are seven subspecies. Females lay one egg at a time on larval host plants. Larvae use these plants as a food source, whereas adult butterflies feed mainly on nectar from flowers. Unpalatability to avian predators i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dogbane Tiger Moth
''Cycnia tenera'', the dogbane tiger moth or delicate cycnia, is a moth in the family Erebidae. It occurs throughout North America, from southern British Columbia to Nova Scotia southwards to Arizona and Florida. The species is distasteful and there is evidence that it emits aposematic ultrasound signals; these may also jam bat echolocation, as the functions are not mutually exclusive. Ecology It is a common feeder on ''Apocynum cannabinum'' (dogbane, Indian hemp) which produces a milky latex containing cardenolides, toxic cardiac glycoside that defend against herbivores. It also feeds on milkweed species, ''Asclepias'', at least in parts of its range, but is most commonly reported from dogbane. Its interactions with bats have been much studied, but are an area of dispute regarding whether the clicks emitted by adult moths are disruptive of bat echolocation, or merely aposematic warning signals. The two functions are not mutually exclusive, however, so it may not be possible to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synanthedon Myopaeformis
''Synanthedon myopaeformis'' is a moth of the family Sesiidae and the order '' Lepidoptera''. In Europe it is known as the red-belted clearwing and in North America as the apple clearwing moth. The larvae create galleries under the bark of fruit trees, especially old trees with damaged trunks. During this process, the larvae cause significant damage to host trees. Particular attention has been paid to the damage they cause to apple trees. Their status as a pest of apple orchards has led to many research projects aimed at controlling populations of the moth. This moth is native to Europe, the Near East and North Africa. Recently, the moth was introduced into North America, being first detected in Canada in 2005. There are several organisms that threaten the larvae, including parasitoids, nematodes, and bacteria. Subspecies * ''Synanthedon myopaeformis cruentata'' (Mann, 1859) * ''Synanthedon myopaeformis graeca'' (Staudinger, 1871) * ''Synanthedon myopaeformis luctuosa'' (Leder ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ecological niche. Thus "habitat" is a species-specific term, fundamentally different from concepts such as environment or vegetation assemblages, for which the term "habitat-type" is more appropriate. The physical factors may include (for example): soil, moisture, range of temperature, and light intensity. Biotic factors will include the availability of food and the presence or absence of predators. Every species has particular habitat requirements, with habitat generalist species able to thrive in a wide array of environmental conditions while habitat specialist species requiring a very limited set of factors to survive. The habitat of a species is not necessarily found in a geographical area, it can be the interior ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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