Our garden is full of monarchs — here are three at once chomping through the foliage.
The caterpillars are doing great, but look at those poor leaves. They’re a wreck.
Also, the eaves of our house and any overhanging bit anywhere are beginning to be festooned with chrysalides.
I like seeing so many monarch caterpillars!
Do you have pics of the chrysalides?
Good to know the Butterflies will continue their existence.
Looks almost as bad as my tomato plants when infested by hornworm caterpillars.
Probably too late to be of much use now and not sure if they would do as well in Minnesota as they do in the Adelaide hills where they are non-native and sligthly weedy (although we leave them specifically for the Monarch Butterfies siucne we want those) but Gomphocarpus fruticosus (swan plant; narrow-leaved cotton bush) :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomphocarpus_fruticosus
is a good host plant and fooder for the Mnarch larvae if that’s any help.
Since it’s the end of summer, won’t these turn into the butterflies that live for 9 months and fly south to Mexico or California? I read some of those guys can cover 250 miles in a day- I can’t drive much more than that before I want to just get a room for the night. Incredible that these fragile thing survive this way.
@ ^ bmatchick :Yes.
See Nat Geo – Monarch Migration and Metamorphosis | Incredible Animal Journeys – five minuteslong.
Plus the MUCH longer – 50 mins lenth doco – Ithink haven’t yet seen itmyself :
Monarch Butterfly Migration: A Mystery Of The Natural World – HD Documentary – here
As wellas the wikipage :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_butterfly_migration
The milkweed root system will be just fine, once it gets established it’s very difficult to remove. The leaves and stalks will be killed back by frost in a few more weeks anyway.
It would be interesting to tag the adults to see how many manage to return next spring.
I appreciate the use of the word festooned in reference to the chrysalides makes me feel good. most people would not react that way to the “infestation”
The excessive humidity this year has really encouraged leaf diseases on the milkweed.
I’m jealous I used to see them all the time as a child. Even though they are planting more trees , there are no more vacant lots for milkweed
They are not an invasive species in Australia? They taste bad or are poisonous, so they’re not feeding anycritter.