Monarch Butterfly Crisis

Roseinarosecity 1/31/2019, 10:11 pm

Dear SFG'ners,
You will be starting your seeds soon or may already have. Consider planting native milkweed for your area; this is the food source for the Monarch caterpillars, and also plant nectar flowers for the adult butterflies. There is a major decline in both the Eastern and Western Monarch Butterfly. I live in California, so the Western Monarch is the butterfly in my garden. This is the graphics sent by the Xerces Society that really shows the major decline:

The left is the 1980's and the right is this past year, 2018. Pretty sad.
You can read more on the Xerces website:
https://xerces.org/monarchs/
Do what you can in your garden.
R

**sanderson** 2/1/2019, 12:43 am

I have read that they are declining in CA. I have a question: Do the pupae survive temps down to 28*F?

CapeCoddess 2/1/2019, 4:01 pm

So weird...I was just coming here to post a butterfly article and there's already and thread for it started. Mixed messages though:

https://monarchwatch.org/blog/?fbclid=IwAR1zdPet04s9vXI3zsJByagFLwqwbbeop24m7yNlnhqXSHtfkAxerw7lTzA

Roseinarosecity 2/1/2019, 6:24 pm

sanderson wrote:I have read that they are declining in CA. I have a question: Do the pupae survive temps down to 28*F?

I don't know. I think it depends how long they will be at that cold temperature and if it gets wet. During our California cold months, we have the least Monarch activity.

OhioGardener 6/29/2020, 5:17 pm

We have an abundance of Monarch butterflies this year. They started arriving about two weeks earlier than they normally do, and they have been very busy in my Monarch Waystation. The Common Milkweed have a lot of caterpillars on them already, so there will soon be another generation moving further north. One of the most beautiful plants in my butterfly garden is the Orange Butterfly Weed. I made a short video of it to show it off a little.

**Scorpio Rising** 6/29/2020, 6:31 pm

Here’s a pic of my Monarch area, I got the common milkweed (native) from Rose Franklin’s site. They arrive tiny but take off and naturalize well. The cilantro self seeds readily, and Walkers Low Catmint is a lovely perennial that blooms year-round (well, here all summer!). Bees etc. love it!

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