BY LYN DES MARAIS
BRANDON—Even those who aren’t bug specialists (I’m raising my hand here) can identify the Monarch butterfly. Many of us watched one hatch in a school room, which undoubtedly made a great impression on us.
Monarchs are large, beautiful, and showy against August and September greenery and clear blue skies. It has come as a shock to many of us that their numbers have dwindled so drastically that the Monarch—the State Butterfly of Vermont—has just been listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
If you, too, have noticed it, it is not your imagination. On the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, the number of Monarchs has fallen 80-to-90%, according to the agricultural research service of the United States Department of Agriculture ( USDA). In raw numbers, the Monarch’s winter population has fallen from over ten million to a few thousand between 1980 and 2021.
The great migration
The Monarch makes an impressive mass migration from Mexico or California, where they have overwintered, every spring to the Midwest and East Coast ending up here in Brandon by mid to late summer. It’s a journey of up to 3000 miles. Considering the Monarch’s size—a wing span of four inches and weight of less than 0.016 ounces—it is nothing short of miraculous.
How do the Monarchs do it?
A single Monarch travels 25 to 30 miles a day. In its two-to-five-week lifespan, it eats, flies, mates, and lays eggs on milkweed.
The Monarch is looking for two things: milkweed and nectar-rich plants. The first three generations of the great migration live short lives, moving ever northward. But the fourth generation, the overwintering generation, hatches in the autumn, flies south, and can live up to nine months.
What’s changed?
The Monarch butterfly’s decline directly tracks to the scarcity of milkweed plants across the United States. Great swaths of milkweed are needed for the butterflies to sustain the great migration.
There continues to be debate and finger-pointing about what or who is responsible for this milkweed loss, with blame meted out among the use of GMO crops and herbicides, monocultures, loss of farmland, global warming, and increasingly severe weather in both the overwintering grounds and migratory corridors.
The only thing everyone seems to agree upon is that the decline of the Monarch is directly linked to the decline in milkweed plants.
What can we do here in Brandon?
Plant native milkweed and lots of it to start. Two varieties are recommended: The common milkweed (Asclepias Syriaca), which has cream-colored flowers, and the swamp milkweed (Asclepias Incarnata), which has a purple flower.
You can buy the plant and seeds or gather them from the milkweed pods and spread them in your garden or at the edge of your property where it touches roadsides, field edges, streams, creeks, or rivers.
I’ve seen it in towns now tucked into corner gardens and among coneflower and thistles. Protect butterflies from pesticides and herbicides on your land, and join neighbors and share ideas on what to grow together. You may also get involved in groups across Vermont and our country trying to save the Monarch. No one can do this alone. We must act together.
Why Milkweed? Won’t something else do?
Milkweed is the only plant a Monarch will lay her eggs on and the only plant the Monarch Caterpillars can feed on. Once hatched, the Monarch Caterpillar grows for two to three weeks feasting exclusively on milkweed. Caterpillars then form chrysalises.
After approximately two weeks, the chrysalises thin out, and you can see the butterflies within. Then the butterflies emerge.
The adult butterflies require nectar-rich food sources. They also need sun and shelter. Luckily for us in Brandon, we have plenty of plants that grow well in sun and sheltered areas.
Here is a list of sun-loving perennial and annual plants that produce nectar for Monarch butterflies: Asters, Bee Balm, Black-eye Susans, Butterfly Weed, Goldenrod, Joe Pye Weed, Liatris, Marigolds, Purple Coneflower, Phlox, Salvia, Sedum, and Zinnias.
Since Monarchs rely on nectar their entire adult lives, keep your gardens blooming!
