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 Everyone’s favorite butterfly has now been placed on the endangered species red list for the most obvious reason: loss of habitat. Its life cycle must be one of the most intriguing, especially for the Lepidoptera Danaus Pexlippus, or more commonly known as the monarch, easily identified by their rusty golden color with black stripes and spots. There are 2 others in the category lumped together as the tiger milkweed butterflies, so identified for what they eay. That they migrate from the Mexican forest to mate and metamorphize in faraway places such as Colorado is even more amazing.

Gulf Coast Fritillary Texas Hill Country, another milk weed migratory butterfly.

             

For a great photo collection of these beautiful butterflies, visit these sights so that you can identify them when they visit your garden:

·       iNaturalist

·      Wikipedia shows the list of the order Danaus. Maybe you have these butterflies in your garden.

 

Rare queen butterfly, Ft. Collins, CO at
the CSU test garden

US Forest Service web page has a very simple explanation of the monarch’s life cycle. Beginning in Mexico during February and March, the monarchs come out of “reproductive diapause” as they begin their northern migration. Along the way, they mate and lay their eggs on milkweeds. During their breeding season, the monarch will live 2-5 weeks, laying eggs only on the various varieties of milkweeds unique to specific geography locations along their migration route. The plant varies from area to area. This one grows here in Colorado.

 The last generation of monarchs born up north will not mate but will return to Mexico and continue their celibacy until early Mexican spring when it is time to head north. They will live as long as 9 months.

These links chart the migration paths:

  Roadside Habitat For Monarchs

·      Wikipedia Milkweed Across America

·      Fall Monarch Migration

·      Two Way Migration 

What to look for in your garden: To begin you must have milkweed. Here in Colorado, milkweed is often called a roadside weed or ditch bank weed; or in the cultivated garden, a noxious weed. They are a prolific perennial that sink deep roots and can only be killed off with weed killer or pulled out as seedlings. The monarchs will feed on other plants, but exclusively lay eggs on the milkweed that caterpillars feed on.

  

Regretfully, at the Garden Spot we have eliminated a healthy stand of milkweed in the front garden circle because we rarely see monarchs—one a season, if we are lucky. But I’m changing my mind, for I have contributed to that loss of habitat and will let the milkweed grow freely—well, maybe well monitored.

“Loss of habitat” just does not adequately explain the seriousness of that condition. Articles using that vague description oversimplify the problem. Where does the habitat go? What destroys it? Vague references to "land development" don’t help, which really is the bulldozing away of raw land, including bogs, swamps, woods, forests, and grasslands which all provide habitat for flora and fauna to plant houses, malls, factories, football fields, and the double threat wind generators that populate the landscape. Take a road trip—well to anywhere from anywhere—and once you hit the wide-open, sparsely populated spaces, you find massive colonies of wind generators such as our drive across what was once called the Great American Desert, or the prairie grassland, all the way through eastern Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma as we head to Texas, which also has a healthy stand of thousands of wind generators that populate Texas landscape. Head east to Iowa, for example, and the wind generators stand in large clusters silently and often at rest along the route.

 

Once that natural land—be it a farm that has been sold grow suburbs or the —as here in Colorado— or land that has been leased or sold to plant those giant white mills in the name of green energy, it will never be reclaimed. The monarchs then have a quite an obstacle course as they make their way north. If the blades of the wind machine don’t whack them, they may not find enough food to make the journey or plants on which to lay their eggs. 

 

Praying Mantis and tiger swallowtail caterpillar 

So what can we do to help the plight of the monarch butterfly? The Head Gardner and I have been having that discussion. Our simple contribution will be to focus planting more butterfly food. I have a feeling that the milkweed will lose its reputation as a ditch bank weed to become a garden center favorite perennial. I will stop pulling out the baby plants and the HG will mow around them. We have at the back of our 5 acres a narrow strip of land that a previous owner fenced off with an electric fence to keep his horses out of the space. It’s just wild grasses, weeds, and trees, so I suggested that we plant butterfly bushes and get the milkweed growing out there and to work more to create a butterfly habitat. 

 

So what we can to help: We can also change the way we garden by providing habitat that nurture  the tiny species in our gardens, some that will do the pest control naturally. We can go to the garden center to buy lady bugs that will eat aphids and praying mantis in our gardens so we can reduce the use of pesticides—which we don’t use at all here, and we can also purchase monarch eggs online, and raise our own generation of butterflies that will hopefully migrate back Mexico.  Probably one of the worst offenders in the backyard garden if you grow tomatoes is the tomato hornworm. Most describe this fellow as disgusting, and it tends to destroy tomato vines. My dad’s answer to that problem was to plant one more tomato plant for the worm that morphs into a beautiful moth.

Learn more about the tomato hornworm here: University of Minnesota Extension: Tomato Hornworms in the Home Garden. 

 

Black Swallowtail on zinnia Texas Hill Country, not a migrating butterfly, just a pretty one.

I always let dill grow wild in the garden that reseeds itself every year to provide food for the black swallowtail butterfly, another very rare visitor the Garden Spot.  More on this beautiful butterfly: Butterflies at Home. A healthy stand of zinnias will also attract and feed butterflies of all species. 

We can purchase monarchs to release instead of balloons that are so dangerous to wildlife to commemorate those special occasions and what great metaphor the butterfly is to remember our lost loved ones.  

https://www.mrbutterflies.com/statesweserve/butterflyreleasecolorado.html

Raising our own monarchs to release in our garden will add to the migrating population : https://monarchbutterflylifecycle.com/blogs/raise/raise-the-migration-monarchs-supply-list 

Really, you don’t need such a fancy set up to raise monarchs. A mason jar will do just fine. As a child living on a farm where I wondered barefooted most of the summer, I captured the monarch caterpillars, which were feeding on the milkweeds along with the stock and more leaves that they were munching on and placed them in mason jar with a perforated wax paper lid and watched them mesomorph as they formed their pupa and slowly emerged as beautiful butterfly. Once the butterfly fully formed, I joyously released it. While I have seen that one monarch flit through the yard, stopping to snack on the butterfly bush by the back patio, I’ve not seen it lay eggs and now most of the native milkweed has been eliminated here at the Garden Spot. 

There are a variety of Facebook pages and dozens of websites where you can learn more about the monarch and ways to increase its migratory population. If we want to save yet another species from extinction, this is one backyard project that will have lasting effects. Teach your children and grandchildren to love, respect, and revere important lepidoptera life forms be they butterflies, bees, or ladybugs, or even the disgusting ones for they all have their place in our gardens. 

There is hope, I do believe, of saving the monarch for other species have been successfully removed from the endangered list, but we must all do our part to help, for the monarch is not the only creature endangered. The loss of forested woodlands and farmlands across the USA, especially in the flyways beginning deep in South America has caused a huge drop in the migrating bird populations, too. Pesticides, especially contribute to reduction of insects and birds, as the bald eagle demonstrates. In the 1970s the bald eagle population had been reduced from thousands to under 500 mating pairs. DDT, a strong pesticide, washed into the rivers where the eagles fished. Not only were the eagles that fished the contaminated rivers poisoned, but the pesticide weakened the eggshells so that they could not support the baby birds. 

The fight to save the bald eagle and remove it from the endangered species list was a success when DDT use was prohibited. Bald eagles that migrate from Alaska to winter here in northern Colorado. What a thrill it is to see hundreds of the majestic birds perched in the trees or ice fishing on local lakes. Each time we see one flying against the blue sky our we get that same thrill. Once again, however, the bald eagle faces a troubled future. While they are no longer endangered and federal law makes it illegal to kill eagles –or any other raptor—thousands of the grand birds, along with other migratory birds, are being sacrificed in the name of green energy as they collide with the giant white wind generator propellors. 

As gardeners, especially, and humans we own a responsibility to preserve and protect wildlife. While we may not be able to change laws or fight city and county governments that side with developers, we can provide nurturing habitats whether it be tiny balcony container gardens or large acreages to help sustain dwindling wildlife populations with habitat.  I’ve provided some links that will hopefully inspire you to take a another look at how you garden and what simple changes you can make to help nurture lepidoptera, and especially Danaus plexlippus.

 

 

 Have a wonderful week and thanks for stopping by.