photograph by karen pulfer focht
Every year Memphis attracts thousands of visitors looking for good hosts. They need a safe place to rest and a little sweet treat to fuel their journey.
Monarch butterflies, the beautiful orange- and black-winged insects, are seeking places to stay, and it’s becoming a challenge because they are facing extinction. In the 1990s, the Xerces Society, which monitors insects and invertebrates, estimated more than 700 million monarchs made their annual migration across the U.S. from Canada to Mexico. In parts of the country, they have seen that number reduced by as much as 90 percent.
The primary threats to our fragile monarch friends are habitat loss, pesticides, and extreme weather. As we pave over farmland to make room for suburban and urban growth, millions of acres of milkweed have disappeared from our landscape
Memphians can help. By offering a little space with just a milkweed plant or two, or creating an entire garden targeted at pollinators, we can become excellent hosts. As they pass through, monarchs search for milkweed to lay their eggs and sweet nectar plants to eat.
Jill Maybry with Memphis Botanic Garden has been growing milkweed for monarch butterflies for the past 20 years. She also raises wild monarchs in protective butterfly nets and releases them once they emerge.
Maybry says monarchs have the best success with common milkweed, (Asclepias syriaca) and showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) and they both grow well in Memphis. “Be aware these may be a little untidy looking for formal gardens,” she says. “These plants emerge in spring from winter dormancy earlier than other milkweeds, so they are often the only variety that monarchs can find when they pass through Memphis in the spring.”
Sydney Calderon at Lichterman Nature Center agrees that “monarch caterpillars eat exclusively milkweed, so having those plants is vital.” Lichterman has a native plant sale April 11th and 12th where they will have several native milkweeds and butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa).
photograph by karen pulfer focht
A monarch butterfly passes through Memphis on Sunday, October 13, 2024, during its migration.
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photograph by karen pulfer focht
Monarchs rely on milkweed (shown orange and yellow) as a host plant for their larvae. Once a caterpillar is discovered on the milkweed, it can be moved into a protective collapsible monarch butterfly habitat that will shield it from predators.
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photograph by karen pulfer focht
The caterpillar climbs to the top of the habitat, where it hangs upside down, in a J-shape, before spinning a silk pad. After about 10-14 days it emerges from its chrysalis. The day the chrysalis gets ready to split, it darkens and the monarch wing pattern begins to show through.
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photograph by karen pulfer focht
Monarch caterpillars are easy to spot with their distinctive colorations. The entire process from egg to caterpillar to butterfly takes about four to five weeks.
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photograph by karen pulfer focht
A monarch caterpillar has a huge appetite and eats milkweed leaves almost constantly, consuming 200 times its body weight.
For more information:
Milkweed Market at Monarch Watch
