Milkweed and monarch butterflies

Milkweed is a plant worth stopping for and taking a closer look. It has large fuzzy, pale green leaves that ooze a white milky sap if broken, and very large seed pods that also ooze white if broken open. All sorts of insects like milkweeds, especially monarch butterflies, which lay their eggs on the plants.



Each summer when the milkweeds are looking tall, I stop and examine a number of the plants, looking for caterpillar droppings and chewed leaves, hoping to find a monarch caterpillar. Sadly (for me) I have not found even one! for years now, even after looking at many hundreds of plants, although I have seen the butterflies. The caterpillars are very beautiful, and the chrysalises they make are amazingly gorgeous. The butterflies are beautiful too, and last week as I stopped to check out some milkweeds, a monarch butterfly was fluttering around the plants and landed directly in front of me while I had my camera handy...If you break a leaf and wait a minute, large globules of sap form on the broken edges. The sappy component is rich in latex, and it is this substance that makes the monarch butterfly very untasty to animals that might prey upon it. The monarch caterpillars feed on the milkweed, inundating their bodies with the substance.






Bumble bees were out in abundance, with dozens of them buzzing around the blossoms.



The seed pods on milkweeds are long, fat, and filled with large seeds. If you break open an unripe pod, milky sap oozes out, but once the pod ripens, it breaks open and the large seeds disperse with a bit of fluff to help carry them away from the parent plant.



I have no clue what those vivid red insects are, but the little yellow things are aphids.






Years ago, when I worked in a national park in these same mountains, I walked past milkweeds every day, and often stopped to look for the monarch caterpillars, which I did find. Monarchs are migratory insects, and during autumn they fly to temperate climates. West of the Rocky Mountains, they migrate to the pacific coast of California and cover many trees, by the millions. During summer, my observations showed they lingered in the mountains, mating and laying eggs. The caterpillars would mature, metamorphose into butterflies, then breed and lay more eggs, until finally, in the fall, they'd be gone.

There is a very good web site dedicated to education regarding the monarch butterfly. Borrowing a map showing the migration routes:
monarch watch