Barb Brewster remembers catching butterflies during her childhood growing up in Jeffersonville. Her mother maintained a colorful landscape that included rows of stunning irises lining their driveway on Utica Pike. “We would see [butterflies] everywhere – in the air and landing on our flowers,” Barb says. But as the years passed, the sightings became rare. “They just weren’t around anymore; I never saw them.”
Monarch butterflies were put on the Endangered Species List in 2021, and Barb and her sister were among the many who noticed and wanted to protect and restore the species. “We started small, but in total we raised and released between 1,600 to 1,800 monarchs,” Barb says.
The process was quite time-consuming and tedious, but the rewards have been great.
Monarchs have a very specific diet; they feed on milkweed. Barb and her sister planted a great deal of the flowering plant, specifically at first the tropical variety. They would go out and search the milkweed leaves for the eggs, which were smaller than the head of a pin. “Once we got used to it, it was easy to see the tiny, oval-shaped eggs, and we collected them in plastic salad dressing containers with lids,” Barb explains. “The hatched caterpillars were no longer than a grain of rice.”
There are four stages in the developmental process for a Monarch. Once the egg becomes a caterpillar, it will shed its skin and enter a clear chrysalis for about two weeks. When they are ready to eclose (the technical word, in this case, for the process of “hatching”), the chrysalis begins to shake and wriggle until the Monarch reveals itself. “I remember an evening when three of them were working to eclose at the same time,” Barb says. “On the radio was that song with the lyrics ‘twisting the night away’ — it was just perfect! I found myself saying out loud “push, push” like I was their birth coach.”
Barb kept the Monarchs in cages on her porch so that they got sunlight and were protected from predators. She made sure that they had plenty of milkweed to eat. (Why do Monarch butterflies only eat milkweed? It makes them poisonous to their predators, such as tachinid flies.) Feeding them and cleaning their cages took four hours a day for Barb, but it was a labor of love.
As Barb continued to research, she discovered that not all milkweed is created equal. That is, the tropical milkweed she was feeding the butterflies was not as good for them as a local species would be. Eating the tropical milkweed that is not native to our region did not send the biological “message” to the butterflies for when it was time to fly south on their migratory journey to Mexico. The tropical plant taught them that it would stay warmer here longer than it actually would. Fascinating!
Barb and her sister made a change — one which others are embracing. Creating pollinator gardens makes a vital difference in the lives of butterflies, insects, flowers, trees, and even humans. The number of Monarch butterflies is on the increase! Barb encourages anyone interested to join her. “Creating a pollinator garden and planting common milkweed is a simple way to help restore our butterfly population,” Barb says. “You can create a beautiful space to enjoy for years to come — full of colorful flowering plants, birds, and butterflies galore.”
By Megan S. Willman
P.S. Get inspired by reading this article about another Indiana Master Gardener.
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