curving back around

curving back around

a black-eyed susan, a monarch

caterpillar seeks

a twig to hang upside down

into a green chrysalis

I've been picking small fuzzy white caterpillars off of my goji berry vine outside our front door. They eat the leaves, so I carefully relocate them. But when I scan for creepy crawlies today, I'm surprised to see a large black, white and yellow striped caterpillar making its way slowly along one of the stems. It's really quite beautiful, with those striking stripes and curvy black horns on both ends. Almost as beautiful as what it will turn into, a Monarch butterfly. It's nice to know that there are still Monarchs around this area, even though they are threatened by all the pesticides applied to monoculture crops.

This specimen, born from eggs laid in September, is a fourth generation Monarch caterpillar. When it emerges from its chrysalis into an orange and black butterfly, it will not die after a couple of weeks of mating and laying eggs, like the first three generations that came before it this year. Instead, it will fly all the way to a warmer climate like Mexico, where it will live for six to eight months before starting the whole cycle again. 

I wonder if it is still looking for a milkweed plant to eat, or whether it's ready to turn into a chrysalis. The strange thing is, I have seen hardly any milkweed plants in our area this year. Usually the swath between the road and the trees is filled with milkweeds. I've looked and looked, but only found one small milkweed plant, with no flowers and no sign of the leaves being chewed by a caterpillar.

These photographs of the sequence of transformations of the Monarch from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly are from an excellent website, which describes the entire generational cycle: http://www.monarch-butterfly.com.

Perhaps if I had left the Monarch caterpillar on my goji vine, instead of placing it on a Black-eyed Susan for a colorful portrait, it might have attached itself to a goji stem, turned into a chrysalis and hatched into a butterfly. Wouldn't that be exciting? But the nights are getting cooler, and if frost threatens I may have to bring my potted goji inside. Then what would happen to the butterfly if it hatched inside? A warmer clime for sure, but no mates within thousands of miles!

orange milkweed beetles

orange milkweed beetles

on warty gray pods bursting

with tufted brown seeds

    Milkweeds typically grow six to seven feet tall, but they are much shorter this year because of the drought. The plant has a deep root system so it can handle droughts quite well, though some of them did not produce any seed pods and the plants show more insect damage than usual. The orange beetles with black spots congregating on the warty pods are one of many insects that feed on milkweeds. Some eat the leaves and others, like these, pierce the pod to feed on the seeds. Milkweed beetles use the toxins contained in the plants as a chemical defense and their bright coloration advertises their inedibility. Despite the drought and insect damage, the pods are bursting with hundreds of brown seeds, each attached to a silken tuft for distribution by wind. That is, if it can escape getting caught in the bracts of goldenrod growing all around.
     Farmers are not fond of milkweeds. The sticky, hard-to-remove plant can be a nuisance in grain fields. But during World War II, the lowly Common Milkweed, Asclepias speciosa, played an important role as a military commodity. In the days before synthetics, life preservers were stuffed with kapok, the seed floss from the silk-cotton tree, Ceiba pentandra, which grows on the islands of the Philippines and Indonesia. During the 1940s, the Japanese fleet captured Java and the Philippines, and the Allies lost their source of kapok. An ideal local substitute turned out to be milkweed floss. The silken tuft attached to each seed is a hollow, wax-coated, flexible fiber six times lighter than wool. A pound and half of milkweed floss would keep a 150-pound sailor afloat for 10 hours. Sailors fondly called these life vests "Mae Wests," a reference to one of their favorite pinup girls. 
     During the war years, milkweed pods were collected by farmers, church groups, civic clubs and school children. Botanists around the country helped coordinate the collection and shipping of the pods to a processing plant in Petoskey, Michigan. During 1944 and 1945, more than 25 million pounds of wild-collected milkweed pods, enough to fill 700 freight train cars, were collected. The company ended up producing over two million pounds of floss before the war ended, in cotton-sized bales that weighed a scant 200 pounds.
     When the war ended, the resumption of cheap, imported kapok ended the demand for milkweed floss, but interest in milkweed never completely died out. In 1989 Natural Fibers Corp. of Ogallala, Nebraska, began manufacturing hypoallergenic fill for pillows. In 2005 the company received a shipment of dried pods grown on five acres near Macomb, Illinois, by the Western Illinois Agricultural Field Lab. Harvested with a snap bean picker, the milkweeds produced 700 to 900 pounds per acre of floss. 
     Milkweed, sometimes considered a nuisance weed, turns out to be a war hero and an ideal crop for the small farmer.

pink buds burst open

pink buds burst open 

into five pointed rocket 

flowers on milky stems

     Common milkweed, Asclepius syriaca, is such an amazing "weed," I wonder why more people don't grow this beautiful perennial in their gardens. Every part of the plant is useful. Carl Linnaeus named the genus after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, because of the many folk-medicinal uses for the milkweed plants. 
     The milky sap which gives milkweed its name contains latex, alkaloids and cardenolides, the plant's defenses against caterpillars, though Monarch butterflies feed on the plants despite its chemical defenses. The sap when applied externally is a natural remedy for poison ivy, clotting small wounds, treating ringworm, and removing warts and moles. 
     The shoots that come up in spring taste look and taste like asparagus when boiled. 
     The pinkish-purple pom pom flower heads that appear in early summer look like loose broccoli but taste like the shoots when boiled.
     The nectar inside the flowers can be used as a sweetener and is an important source of nectar for pollinators such as bees, wasps and butterflies. (Milkweed pollination occurs in an unusual manner. Instead of tetrads or individual grains, milkweed pollen is packed into little sacs called pollinia. When a visiting insect slips into one of the five slits in each flower, the sac attaches to the insect's feet or mouth and then gets deposited in another flower.)
     The immature follicles or seed pods that appear in late summer can be boiled and eaten whole. The immature wad of floss inside the pods when boiled is slightly sweet and looks, acts and tastes like cheese.
     The pappus or "silk" inside the mature pods is lightweight and makes an excellent insulator, better than down.
     A tea prepared from the roots is used as a diuretic for kidney stones, a laxative and an expectorant.
     The entire plant is beneficial to nearby plants, repelling some pests, especially wireworms.
     Best of all, in the fall when the pods ripen and spit open, milkweeds provide magical entertainment. Inside the follicle, the flat brown seeds are packed together in what looks like a smooth pine cone with overlapping scales. Each seed is attached to a white filament. As the silky filaments dry, they begin to expand and puff out. When a child (or young-hearted adult) blows on the dry silk, the white parachutes detach and sail away, carrying their small passengers aloft, bound for a new home.