by Linda Gangi

Upon moving to Manahawkin, I decided to have plants that benefit wildlife in my garden, so last spring I purchased a tropical milkweed plant at a native plant sale.  Milkweed is the sole food for developing monarch caterpillars. In my naiveté, I thought that this one milkweed plant would spread and by the time the Monarchs needed plants to lay eggs on, I would have a nice area filled with milkweed. The reality was I ended up with one plant that battled the unusually hot summer all by itself.  I’m not an expert on tropical milkweed, but compared to our wild milkweed, this one plant was tall and spindly with small leaves, and seemed kind of puny to me.  It did, however, produce flowers and seemed quite happy, but I held out no hope that I could bolster the Monarch population with its presence.

The heat of the summer waned on, keeping me indoors a great deal of the time. Sometime around mid-August I noticed that most of the leaves were gone from the milkweed plant. I took a closer look, and to my surprise found eleven healthy Monarch caterpillars. I was shocked that they had grown to more than an inch without me noticing.  In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been that surprised. Off and on I had seen monarchs in the yard. The heat of the summer had convinced me that not much was happening in my garden, but I guess the butterfly didn’t care whether it was a puny plant or not, it was probably just happy to find a plant for its eggs.  After my initial excitement of this discovery wore off, I realized that this one plant could not continue to support eleven caterpillars.

It is common for people to take Monarchs in the house and create a suitable environment for them by providing milkweed and a place for them to pupate.  I guess I’m more of a purist when it comes to that. I wasn’t comfortable interfering and was afraid that they wouldn’t survive.  I felt responsible all the same.  I had planted one plant and now there wouldn’t be enough to go around.  

There was only one solution to the problem. I needed to provide more milkweed leaves and leave the caterpillars in their natural environment.  Having had experience with Polyphemus caterpillars, I knew that they would require fresh leaves. If they weren’t fresh, they wouldn’t eat them.  So I set out to find fresh milkweed leaves for my plump munching machines, thinking this would be a simple task.  To make a long story short, it wasn’t.  I had a hard time finding one wild milkweed plant!  I drove around for an hour looking and eventually found a patch that had evaded the mowers.  

Photo Credit: Sue Puder

Since these plants were some distance from the house, I wanted to collect enough leaves for a few days, but knew the caterpillars would want them fresh.  Not knowing whether it would work or not, I collected my leaves and kept the leftovers in a cup with a small amount of water in the refrigerator, hoping that this would keep them fresh long enough to satisfy the discerning palettes of my visitors.  Once I had the leaves, I wondered how I was going to serve them to the voracious caterpillars.  I did the only thing I could think of. I tied the leaves to the plant and then waited to see if they were acceptable.
  
What was most amazing is that those caterpillars knew that I had just given them food and they marched over and started munching and munching and munching.  The trick of storing the leaves in the refrigerator worked. I changed the leaves once or twice a day for close to a week.   When they were big, fat, and ready to leave their host plant, one by one, the caterpillars wandered off to find that perfect plant for their next phase: the chrysalis.  Bereft at their departure I knew in my heart I had done the right thing by leaving them on the plant.  My only regret was that I did not get to witness their metamorphosis into a new generation of Monarch Butterflies.

I think the moral of this story is that Monarch Butterflies need habitat!  We are so concerned with the looks of things that we mow willy-nilly all plants that don’t look like grass, with no regard for anything besides ourselves.    We need to take a closer look at our environment and realize it’s not just us. If we really cared that much about ourselves, we would take more time to figure out what really benefits us.   We can’t destroy the natural world and expect to survive, it’s not realistic.  All living things are connected - that is the bottom line!  
I plan on planting plenty of tropical milkweeds this year, and I hope you’ll do the same! If you have wild milkweed on your property, consider leaving it just as it is. The Monarchs will thank you with future generations.

If you would like to know more about the Monarch visit: