Over The Garden Fence: Learning about monarch butterflies
People are starting to believe that native plants that are tough, and offer support to native bees, birds and butterflies. Many of us have planted token amounts of plants like butterfly weed, milkweeds, rigid and showy goldenrods, and have had common milkweeds move into our flower beds on their own.
Through the years, Cheryl Corney has brought the native thought to me and to fellow garden club members in the form of young plants. She can get about any seed in the universe to germinate, making her life suddenly loaded with baby plants.
She told me about a week-long class she took in Mansfield where the group studied the fascinating monarch life cycle, its needs, how to raise them from eggs then sustain them on fresh cuttings of milkweed. Games and crafts were included. It was one of the periods where Cheryl had begun milkweed seeds. When the class leaders confessed their efforts had failed, she was able to deliver more than enough.
Now, this love affair has led to the tagging. Cheryl does not just walk around in the wild and hunt eggs and young larvae on milkweed plants. She checks her own yard.
This season she has had as many has 15 captives at one time, inside, where they need constant fresh milkweed leaves daily to move through their caterpillar stage. Her quiet demeanor noted “you can actually hear the crunching” as larvae munch their way into contentment. In a simple net setup, they move on to forming a chrysalis, bringing a quietness on the 18th day of life.
By day 30, a butterfly’s wings are visible through the chrysalis wall. On that day an adult emerges, and goes through an elaborate drying process.
This tagging step that follows the drying out is where Cheryl’s energy for feeding the larvae is rewarded. The tags were secured from Kansas University. Each tiny round tag comes on a sheet much like postage stamps. Each has a set of 3 numerals and 3 letters. Cheryl folds the tag away from the backing and with a toothpick she lifts it and sets in place on the wing; a gentle touch of the finger insures that it will remain in place. In the photograph today, you can actually read the code and the 800 number. The tags are logged in records showing male or female, date of release, whether they were reared or found out in the wild, along with the city, state and zip code. Information goes back to Lawrence, Kansas.
Recently, Cheryl tagged her 200th monarch this year. That is a heck of a lot of watching eensy weensy larvae, lots of cutting fresh stalks of common milkweed for nurturing, and hours of observing about how well the caterpillar makes its attachment before entering the pupa stage inside the chrysalis. Yes, Cheryl’s nursery is well-managed.
To me, it is interesting how she watches for the presence of larvae on swamp milkweed, where most of hers are found. Once they are in the netting unit, the food source becomes common milkweed since it is more readily available. She discovered that if common milkweeds are cut back along ditches they actually grow back with more tender leaves for feeding the young. Though her yard is loaded with plants that bring on egg laying, she removes the ones found, placing them in her netting.
She makes me feel guilty. When my blooming swamp milkweed attracted nine monarch larvae, I squealed and did nothing. By morning the shrub was stripped and caterpillars gone. Shame on me. All that potential.
Life is good because of the nurturing and knowledge shared by Cheryl Corney.
Mary Lee Minor is a member of the Earth, Wind and Flowers Garden Club, is an accredited flower show judge for the Ohio Association of Garden Clubs and a former sixth-grade teacher.