milkweed

Monarch visiting a Zinnia flower

My friend Candace shared an article this weekend from the New York Times on the shocking decline of the Monarch Butterfly. I’ve been following their plight, and blogged about it earlier this year.

Here’s a bit of background:

Unlike most migrating species, monarch butterflies employ an improbable strategy that splits their round-trip migration between generations. Their life cycles must be intricately synchronized with those of the milkweed on which they lay their eggs.

Monarchs returning from Mexico reach the Southeast soon after native milkweeds appear in spring, producing the first of up to three generations that breed on new milkweed through summer. When the perennials start dying back in the fall, a final generation of butterflies typically emerges in a sexually immature state. Rather than reproduce when food is scarce and caterpillars might freeze, they fly to Mexico, to wait out the winter.

In the Midwest, which produces half of Mexico’s wintering monarchs, the scores of wild milkweed species among grasslands and farms are fast disappearing.

Nearly 60 percent of native Midwestern milkweeds vanished between 1999 and 2009, the biologists Karen Oberhauser and John Pleasants reported in 2012 in the journal Insect Conservation and Diversity. The loss coincided with increased applications of the weed killer Roundup on expanded plantings of corn and soybeans genetically altered to tolerate the herbicide. Meanwhile, monarch reproduction in the Midwest dropped more than 80 percent, as did populations in Mexico. Source: New York Times

Like many backyard gardeners, I wanted to do something to help, so I bought a packet of Milkweed seeds advertised as Butterfly Flowers. They are the genus Asclepias incarnata. What I didn’t know is that Swamp Milkweed continues to grow past the time the butterflies should be heading south.

Monarch sipping nectar from Statice

According to the article, our good intentions could be backfiring. Here’s an excerpt:

There’s this huge groundswell of people planting tropical milkweed, and we don’t know what it’s doing to the butterflies,” said Francis X. Villablanca, a biology professor at California Polytechnic University. “We’re all in a rush to figure it out.”

Dr. Altizer fears that when monarchs encounter lush foliage in the fall, they may become confused, start breeding and stop migrating.

“It’s sad, because people think planting milkweed will help,” she said. “But when milkweed is available during the winter, it changes the butterfly’s behavior.”

The times article linked to additional reading including ways to create habitat for Monarchs. I also learned at The Exerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation that its important to plant Milkweed native to our area. I found a site called Larner Seeds and ordered a species of Milkweed better suited to San Jose.

The Butterfly Effect

The butterfly effect is a scientific theory put forth by Edward Lorenz. It’s described this way:

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the metaphorical example of the details of a hurricane (exact time of formation, exact path taken) being influenced by minor perturbations such as the flapping of the wings of a distant butterfly several weeks earlier.

Ray Bradbury’s uses the butterfly effect in his chilling short story, A Sound of Thunder. Wealthy hunters pay a large sum of money to travel back in time to kill a dinosaur. They must stay on the approved path, and shoot the dinosaur, seconds before the animal dies from a falling tree. The hunter steps off the path and irrevocably alters time. When he returns to the present his reality is permanently altered. Devastated, he looks down at his boot and sees a crushed butterfly.

Could we be witnessing our own ‘butterfly effect’? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Additional Resources on the Monarch’s plight include:

Butterfly Chrysalis

Butterfly habitat: My son raised and released five Monarchs several years ago

Cover Crop:

Once the unidentified behemoth, aka the pumpkin/zucchini mystery plant, dies back, I’ll plant both vegetable boxes with a cover crop. Purchased online from Botanical Interests,

This hardworking combination of field peas and hulled oats is a legume and grass cover crop that quickly benefits the soil with nutrients and green matter, while helping suppress weeds. A great cover crop for established gardens, the mix is also perfect for improving areas being turned into gardens such as lawns and vacant lots.

Pea plants fix nitrogen and condition the topsoil while the pea flowers attract bees and other beneficial insects. As an added benefit the young pea shoots and tendrils are edible and can be used in salads or as a soup topping. Oats hold nitrogen, provide green matter and provide support for the pea vines.

Cover Crop Seeds

When planted in the fall, the oats and peas benefit from the cool weather but are killed by the cold temperatures of winter and won’t regrow in the spring. The dead plant material provides a wonderful winter mulch that helps prevent soil erosion and is ready to be tilled into the garden as soon as soil can be worked in the spring

Not bad for $2.99 a packet! I bought three.

Butterfly Flower:

After reading earlier this year about the decline in butterfly populations, I learned that one of the problems is the reduction in Milkweed. I’ve never seen it offered in our nursery centers, but found the seeds online. It’s a perennial, and will replace the seasonal flowers I’ve grown for the past two years in the triangle near our front sidewalk. The plant prefers swampy conditions, but they say it will do okay with ‘regular’ garden watering.

Butterfly Flower and Broccoli

I’m trying not to get my hopes up, since San Jose is anything but swampy. I’ll be thrilled, though, if I can plant a healthy shrub that attracts Monarch’s and helps them on their way south.

Cat Grass Oats:

My sister’s indoor kitty, KT loves his greens. He prefers home-grown to what’s available at the market and I can grow it for a song year round. Pretty cool, eh? So I plant a pot every few weeks and place it near the kitchen window. My sister brings me the empty pot, and I start a new batch so we always have them in rotation.

I tried to get Mr. Personality to pose for these pictures, but we wasn’t having any of it. He eventually nibbled on the corner of the envelope, before jumping down and moving on.

“Clever” Photo attempt Number One

“Clever” Photo attempt Number Two

Here is the lovely KT moving in for a nibble. Isn’t he the sweetest? KT started out as a foster cat, but she couldn’t let him go.

KT Loves his Greens

So, that’s my seedy business this fall. How about you? Are you dropping a seed or two into the earth, a greenhouse, or the time-honored pot in the windowsill?