By David P. Davis
Newsroom@DominionPost.com
What’s blooming this week at the West Virginia Botanic Gardens? Daylilies galore, black-eyed Susans everywhere and now, Shasta daisies framing everything around them. But what I am really excited about this week is that the monarch butterflies are back!
The monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus, is a marvel of the insect world due to its amazing migration story. Spending winters in the highlands of Mexico, they fly north in the spring as far as southern Canada.
After a generation there, they head back through the United States. The females will lay eggs on milkweed and the larvae will hatch and feed on the plant. Eventually, a chrysalis will form where metamorphosis will transform the larval tissues into a new adult butterfly.
As monarch numbers have dwindled for a variety of reasons, many gardeners and butterfly-friendly volunteers have engaged in monarch butterfly surveillance (monarchwatch.org), cultured the host milkweed plants and even propagated monarchs.
At the WVBG, we have been expanding our milkweed collection and now have swamp, butterfly and common milkweed. Just this week, our first female monarch arrived at the garden to lay eggs on the swamp milkweed below the Education and Event Building, and the common milkweed in the pollinator garden beds.
Milkweed is an herbaceous perennial in the genus Asclepias. It is named after its latex, milky sap that also contains cardiac poisons. These poisons are sequestered and retained by the monarch caterpillar as they eat the foliage, which renders the caterpillar and the adult monarch distasteful to birds and other predators if consumed. The bright colors of the larva and adult provide a warning to predators — “If you eat me, you will regret it.”
Last year, the eggs laid on the swamp milkweed led to complete defoliation of our new, young milkweed plants and caterpillars had to be moved to the common milkweed to complete their immature phase. Keep an eye out as you visit the garden for the lovely monarch larva, with yellow, black and white stripes.
Elsewhere in the Yagle Garden, our “Vermeer” calla lilies are in bloom. The “Vermeer” variety have a mauve inner-cup that transitions to a white lip. Calla lilies are a great perennial for any full-sun, moist-soil area and are deer and rabbit tolerant.
Come see this and more at your next visit to the WVBG. We will see you at the garden.
David P. Davis, Ph.D., gardener at the WVBG. For visiting information, maps, and more, visit WVBG.org.
