If you’ve been following the plight of the monarch butterfly over the past several years, you have heard their numbers have literally crashed, especially out here in the western United States.
Where we once had millions of monarch butterflies decades ago, within the last several years the Xerces Society has counted less than a couple thousand monarchs, only 1914 butterflies to be exact, during their Thanksgiving population count of 2020.
Not a very uplifting statistic is it?
The call has been, and from what I am seeing still is, to plant milkweed, lots and lots of milkweed.
Nectar plants are also encouraged as migrating monarchs need to fatten up a bit to make the long flight to their overwintering grounds in Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California but a severe lack of milkweed limits any benefit an abundance of nectar-bearing plants could produce, and here’s why.
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It is well known and even more so documented that the monarch butterfly only lays its eggs on milkweed.
And this highly misunderstood plant is, in fact, the only food source the hungry monarch caterpillars will eat as they grow for several weeks before the miracle of metamorphosis takes place.
It’s a pretty simple and straightforward equation really, no milkweed literally means no monarch eggs, no monarch caterpillars, and, of course, no monarch butterflies.
So, as we can deduce from all of this, without milkweed giving monarch caterpillars a place to live, there would be, well, no monarch butterflies to visit our offering of nectar-bearing flowers and bushes no matter how many we plant.
It all starts with milkweed, plain and simple.
But is planting a couple small stands of milkweed in a backyard garden really going to help a butterfly population that has literally declined from millions to just a few thousand?
From what I observed in my yard just yesterday I am going to say yes, even just a few small stands of milkweed can help bring this iconic species of butterfly back from the brink of disaster if, however, we all pitch in and plant a few stands of milkweed in our own backyard gardens.
Bear with me a moment and let me explain as I am hoping this will help encourage someone that was on the fence about planting milkweed in their yard to go ahead and do so, thinking a few stands won’t make a difference at all.
Yesterday afternoon I pulled into my driveway and, as I always do this time of year, I glanced at a very small stand of milkweed that has been in my pasture for 6 or 7 years now.
Something fluttering around one of the milkweed plants immediately caught my eye, it was a monarch butterfly and the first one of the season for me in my yard.
I rushed over to see what I think was a female monarch checking out my small offering of milkweed to possibly leave me a few eggs.
Once she left, I just had to check for eggs since I saw which plants she was landing on and paying the most attention to.
No eggs were found but much to my amazement, I found two very small monarch butterfly caterpillars on two small and separate milkweed plants.
(Monarch Caterpillar In My Yard Yesterday Feeding On Showy Milkweed.
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This particular stand of milkweed was a wild-sown patch and I just let it do whatever it wants, allowing it slowly but surely spread a bit each year.
In years past, I never really gave this particular stand of milkweed much consideration because it is so small and sparse.
For some reason, maybe too much shade, I don’t know, it just never really took off like some of my milkweed has that gets a lot more sunshine.
And as such, I never checked it for eggs or caterpillars until today as I honestly thought it was just too small to attract a female to lay her eggs.
Well, as you can rightfully see, I was wrong.
And I’m not afraid to admit I was wrong either, hoping it will encourage others to plant even a small stand of milkweed in their own backyard.
Even this tiny, scraggly patch of milkweed I never gave much consideration does indeed give a decent place for monarchs to lay their eggs.
So from now on, I am going to check every stand of milkweed on my property for caterpillars, no matter how big or how small the patch is.
Even small stands of milkweed such as this one can indeed help the monarch butterfly population, even if it is just one caterpillar a year.
If we all added just one monarch butterfly to the fall migrating population, just think of how many thousands upon thousands of monarch butterflies that would add up to.
And I can honestly say there are few, if any, creatures I love seeing in my yard more than a monarch butterfly.
I literally get goosebumps each year when I see the first one of the season fluttering around the milkweed in my yard.
The great thing about this very misunderstood plant is milkweed benefits far more than just monarch butterflies and can be a very attractive addition to any backyard garden when it is in bloom.
Even if the monarch butterfly wasn’t in trouble I would still suggest planting a pollinator garden in your backyard that includes a species of milkweed that is native to your region.
It is just so peaceful and enjoyable to have one of nature’s most beautiful creatures such as the monarch butterfly give us a visit each summer and it is even more rewarding to know we’ve helped out the monarch butterfly as well as a variety of other creatures by planting one simple but highly misunderstood plant as the milkweed.
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