Monarchs and Milkweeds

 

The media, social and otherwise, have done a heroic job lately about alerting people to the plight of the monarch and the need to plant milkweed. As I watch this relationship play out in my landscape, I am reminded of how intricate it is. Both of them need each other while at the same time suffer from each other's presence. Like so many relationships..., it's complicated. Nature is like that.

We're often reminded to plant milkweeds to feed the monarch (and queen and soldier) caterpillars like it is the role of a milkweed plant to be consumed and subservient to the needs of the butterfly. It's a role too often promulgated by the vast number of us that are blind to the nature of plants. Plants are essentially inanimate objects that fill up space and serve the wishes of the animal kingdom. It's played out far too often in the accounts I read, whether directly or indirectly stated, and it's false. 

In the case of monarchs and milkweeds, it could be said that the plants have the upper hand in their relationship. Perhaps that's true for every relationship forged between plant and animal. Milkweeds often pay a heavy price for joining forces with milkweed butterflies. At times, they are stripped to the ground of all their foliage. At others, their clusters of blooms are entirely consumed. People in the "business" of raising monarchs despair and search for more plants to add to their landscape to rectify this when it occurs..... I'd ask this question: are milkweeds playing us as well?

The problem of only seeing this side is that it would appear that milkweeds (and plants in general) are passive creatures and of course they are not. Milkweeds seem to know exactly what they are doing. Years of evolution can do that. For one, milkweeds have evolved to recover quickly to the loss of their leaves and stems. While the monarchs have to leave the area once their food source is temporarily gone, the milkweed plants now can flourish in their absence. It is their way of getting rid of the out-of-town guests who have overstayed their welcome. I find it ingenious.  While the monarch people are despairing that some of their caterpillars have run out of food and will die, the milkweed plants are applauding. Our intervention in this dance between them is simply wrong. It seems to me that we shouldn't be taking sides at all. 

When we keep monarchs continuously at our milkweed patches, we encourage parasites and diseases that kill monarchs just as easily as if we were to let nature take its course regarding their food supply. The so-called problem of using tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) is because of this - not because monarchs do not benefit from feeding on the plant.  It is, in a way, the revenge of the plant world for our interference in the evolutionarily created balance of nature. There is always a yin and a yang when we try to play God. We'd do better by simply setting the table and inviting everyone to the feast.

What many also fail to fully comprehend is that milkweeds lure monarchs to serve themselves as well. As I watch my area of blooming pink and white swamp milkweeds right now (A. incarnata and A. perennis) I am compelled to notice that the pollinator most drawn to the flowers are monarch butterflies. It is true that others visit, but it also is true that there are no more-effective visitors than milkweed butterflies. Milkweeds have curried their favor over millennia. Their complicated pollination strategy largely precludes many other potential pollinators. They are targeting monarchs and their kin to do the job. 

Monarchs and milkweeds both use and need each other. It is a ballet choreographed over thousands of years and like all great works of art, there is a lot more than first meets the eye. Plants are no less cunning or selfish than animals. It takes some of that to survive in the real world - and if our landscapes are to be part of that, we need to recognize this and respect plants for what they truly are.