Munching Monarchs

Back in May I mentioned finding monarch babies on our milkweed. For weeks after that I couldn’t find any more caterpillars or any sign of chrysalides so I thought maybe birds or wasps had predated them. Recently I began noticing that the swamp milkweed was being chomped on so I checked out those plants and found two caterpillars.

Then another evening I trudged through the jungle of weeds in another bed to see about the tropical milkweed and found two more caterpillars! Happily they seemed to be gorging themselves quite satisfactorily and it was nice to sit and watch them for a few minutes.

The bottom monarch decided it was time to get all of that processed milkweed out of its system!

I’m very glad we’re finally having some success with milkweeds and monarchs in the garden this year. We’ve had a few tropical milkweed plants in the garden here over the last several years but none have ever hosted any caterpillars. I have more milkweed seeds in the fridge that are stratifying and will plant them out in the next few weeks. My ultimate goal is to have several more patches in the flower bed but to also establish some plants in the ROW out front.

You can see some of the stripped swamp milkweed here! Since several of the caterpillars were getting quite large I’m now keeping an eye out for chrysalides! Hopefully we have some emerging butterflies soon!