The Dry Garden: What’s that bug?
Pterotus obscuripennis. Source: Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Click on the telltale feathery antennae to be taken to the museum's Beetle Project.
Three things happen when you plant a garden. You meet your neighbors, who stop to chat. You meet their kids, who hang out. And you meet the bugs that the kids find. The ability to identify the bugs ensures you heroic status in the eyes of children. Failure to identify them is a crashing experience not to be wished upon one’s worst enemy.
Click here to keep reading the Dry Garden column in the Los Angeles Times as Cal State Northridge entomologist James N. Hogue gives tips on identifying bugs for kids.
Hogue is co-author with Arthur V. Evans of “Field Guide to Beetles of California.” Click here to find out about Hogue’s April 3 class “Insects and Native Plant Gardens” at the Theodore …
North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
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