Common Milkweed

With the great migration of Monarch butterflies in serious danger of becoming extinct, I knew I needed to have milkweed in my new garden.  I started seeds, ordered seedlings, and ended up with a few dozen milkweed plants clustered around the garden.   Apparently I didn't need to worry so much about planting milkweed - while exploring the back wild edge of our property, I found that Mother Nature had beaten me to the punch!

cluster of milkweed flowers, starting to bloom

I found an entire stand of Asclepias syriaca, otherwise known as Common Milkweed, in my back yard.

The pollinators were in love.

I'm just going to lie here and drink some nectar...

I had never smelled Common Milkweed flowers before.  Beautifully fragrant, they smell like lilacs to me.

The nickname of Common Milkweed shows how plentiful it used to be.  This plant was considered a terribly fast-growing, hard-to-control weed by farmers (and still is, oftentimes).  

One of the few herbicides that works on it is glyphosate (known often under the brand Roundup), which one of the reasons why Roundup-ready crops were so welcome by farmers.  Finally this weed and many others could be easily gotten rid of with what (at the time) seemed like minimal impact on the environment...

In 1996, 3% of corn and 7.4% of soybeans grown in the US were herbicide-tolerant.  By 2013, 85% of corn and 93% of soybeans were herbicide-tolerant, much of it grown in the Midwest, the corridor of Monarch migration.  Of course, the increase in herbicides led to a sharp decline of milkweed...

...which led to a sharp decline in the population of Monarch butterflies.  I'm sure other wildlife populations are affected, as well (and we won't even go into the evolution of Roundup-resistant weeds that are now spreading.)

Skipper butterfly on Milkweed

It is interesting how many plants we think of as weeds, really turn out to be important in the ecosystem.

A noxious weed to farmers that invades their crops and can affect their livelihood?  A necessary plant to survival for a butterfly?  It is hard to strike balance when talking about this one small but impactful plant, but it certainly can't be healthy to lose such large numbers of wildlife.

So I will do a little gardener's dance at the fact that I have Common Milkweed weeding it up in the back yard and plant a few more milkweed seedlings in the front.  I haven't seen any Monarchs yet..

...but I want to be ready for them and any other native wildlife that might need a helping hand.

My favorite bush - Buddleja davidii 'Santana'

It's the last stunted blossom of the season for the beautiful 'Santana' butterfly bush now that freezing temperatures have arrived.

I have written about my Santana before - I just can't seem to say enough good things about it.  The blooms are a glowing magenta purple, and the variegated foliage is beautifully edged with gold.

The Santana has been full of blooms all summer thanks to regular deadheading every couple of weeks.  Out of all of my pollinator friendly flowers and bushes, this one seemed to attract the most butterflies and bees by far.  Here in zone 7b, it also keeps a lot of its beautiful leaves throughout our mild winters.

A bush that blooms for months, has beautiful foliage, and attracts butterflies?  No wonder it's my favorite shrub!

In its second year, my Santana is 4' tall and 7' wide.  Yep, 7' wide - one of the only things I don't care for about this bush is its rather messy and splaying habit.

It is also rumored to be a short lived cultivar, sadly.

This Buddleja davidii 'Santana' is in full sun and in one of the best drained spots in my clay yard, which is good, as they can be prone to rot.  Now that it is established, I hardly ever water it.  Buddleja davidii (also spelled Buddleia davidii) bloom on new wood, so I will prune it down to a couple feet tall in late winter.  We'll see if some pruning can help the splaying habit somewhat.

But either way, I love this bush..

 

.. and I don't think I'm the only one.

A Monarch with a Sticker

Every fall millions of monarch butterflies leave their residence in the US and Canada and migrate to California and Mexico to spend the winter.   This past week I have spotted quite a few monarchs here in North Carolina as they feed on nectar plants in order to store energy for the long flight.

 

 

I have seen several monarchs in the Red House gardens, and there have even been monarchs fluttering around people at the plant stores.  

My kids were quite surprised and delighted the other day when we were at a big home and garden store and a monarch landed on a plant right next to us!  I was even more surprised when I saw that the butterfly had a sticker on its hind wing.  It was a round sticker, and it looked a lot like the little stickers that they put on fruit.   

I was saddened.  I assumed that the poor monarch must have somehow gotten a sticker on him at the store.  However, the more I thought about it, the more suspicious I became.  How exactly had the monarch gotten a sticker in the middle of his hind wing like that?  I did some research and found...

It was a monarch tag!

sample monarch tag

According to the Monarch Watch website, much is still unknown about the migration of monarchs, and monarch tagging can help.  Starting in August, volunteers in the US and Canada catch monarchs, carefully place a tag on the underside of the hind wing, and release them. 

You can volunteer to catch and tag monarchs for research purposes at Monarch Watch.

 Researchers hope that the information produced through tagging will solve unanswered questions about their migration.  According to the Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust, most of the tags recovered are from Mexico, where Monarch Watch personnel visit the overwintering sites of monarchs and pay local people for each tag that they discover.  Others are recovered by people who do not know anything about this program but find a deceased butterfly with the tag and contact the Monarch Watch.

So if you see a sticker on a Monarch butterfly, don't be sad like I was.  Instead, see if you can spot the tag code on it, and e-mail that code and its location to tag@ku.edu.  You could be helping the scientific community unravel mysteries about these beautiful butterflies!

Some Interesting Facts about Monarchs:

-  Monarchs can fly over 3,000 miles during their migration.

-  During the summer, monarch butterflies usually live for only 2 - 6 weeks.  Migrating monarchs, however, go into a non-reproductive, hibernating phase for the winter which allows them to live up to 7 months or even more. 

-  In spring, the monarchs come out of hibernation, mate, fly north in order to lay their eggs, and then die.  Those eggs hatch, and the resulting monarchs keep migrating north, lay their eggs, and then die.   This continues for several generations.  It is the original monarchs' great-great-grandchildren that will start the cycle all over again by migrating south back to the same winter nesting locations!

- Monarchs who live west of the Rocky Mountains will overwinter in pine and eucalyptus trees in and near Pacific Grove and Santa Cruz, California.  Monarchs who live east of the Rockies overwinter in oyamil fir trees at several locations in Mexico.

- Monarchs who live in Bermuda and Hawaii do not migrate, as their climates are mild enough to stay year-round.  Australian monarchs may make short migrations to warmer areas for the winter.

- A monarch antennae contains what is essentially a circadian clock and a compass.

- Unfortunately, the monarch butterfly population has suffered a large decline in recent years due to urbanization, illegal deforestation of their winter nesting sites, and several severe winters that have decimated much of the population at Mexican overwintering sites.

You can help the monarch population by planting Butterfly Weed, which they lay their eggs on.

Petunias in the Butterfly Garden

The lowly petunia is not only easy to grow, 

it is also a draw for many butterflies, such as this orange sulphur, also often called an alfafa sulphur.

Not every butterfly can reach the nectar that is deep inside the petunia.

According to Kris Wetherbee's article 'Gardening for Butterflies' for Audubon Magazine, skippers, monarchs and painted ladies have long tongues, swallowtails and most whites and sulphurs have medium-length tongues, and many brushfoot butterflies have very short tongues.  Though in general, butterflies have nothing on many moths - the proboscis of some sphinx or hawk moths can measure up to 14 inches!

For this small petunia, the orange sulphur has no problem reaching the nectar.  However the deeper petunia blossoms apparently require some 

s t r e t c h i n g ...

to get one's fill of sweet petunia nectar.

Santana - the Variegated Butterfly Bush

Look at how beautiful that is!

Such striking colors!

Even the most subtle hues have such beauty.

Oh yeah, and those butterflies are gorgeous as well!

If you can tear your focus away from those beautiful butterflies, you will see the Buddleia davidii 'Santana', a gorgeous butterfly bush with green and gold variegated leaves and fuchsia purple flowers. 

It is also a butterfly magnet in my yard, as you can tell, beloved by the swallowtails and skippers that visit the Red House's garden.  I have the Santana in the small part of my yard that actually gets decent drainage, and it also gets full sun.

Now, onto the cons of this bush.  Sadly, according to the nearby Plant Delights Nursery, this butterfly bush is fairly short-lived.   Mine also has a rather splaying habit.

We'll see if a little pruning before next year's growth will encourage a more upright shape.  However, even with these small detractions, the Red House is very enamored with this butterfly bush and will enjoy it for as many years as it can.

Okay, now you can go back to looking at the butterflies..