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One of the most recognizable butterflies today is the monarch butterfly. Its distinctive orange and black wings make it easy to pick out among the plants and flowers. Females tend to be a little smaller than males and have darker veins in their wings. Males usually have a black spot in the middle of their hind wings.

There are actually two types of subspecies in the Monarch butterfly family. The main difference between the two is that one subspecies, the Danaus p. plexippus, migrates and the other subspecies, the Danaus p. megalippe, does not. Migratory monarchs are generally found in North America, because of the climate changes and non-migratory monarchs are found in hot climates around the equator.

Monarchs tend to have a long annual migrations period. The migration will commence sometime between August and the first frost of the year. The northward migration occurs in the spring. The lifespan of a monarch butterfly is a little less than two months.

Unlike most of the world’s insects the monarchs are one of very few that can migrate across the Atlantic Ocean. They have been sited in Great Britain, New Zealand and Hawaii. Australia also has a population of monarchs, both migratory and non-migratory.

Monarch butterflies do not have many predators because they are naturally poisonous. In caterpillar form they eat the milkweed leaves and store the poison from this plant. It is still stored in their body when they turn into a butterfly. The orange in their wings is a warning sign to animals that they are dangerous and may be hazardous to that animal’s health. The Viceroy butterfly resembles the Monarch but unlike the Monarch they are not poisonous.

To attract monarchs to your garden you can plant specific milkweed plants that monarchs use as food. It is also possible to grow and nurture your monarch caterpillar until it is in butterfly form where you can release it into the wild. Laws have been passed to make it illegal to deforest monarch butterfly over wintering grounds to help the butterfly population.

A brief overview of the Monarchs mating cycle is as follows. The female prepares herself for breeding and the breeding occurs. The baby Monarchs actually develop in the female for a period of nine months. The eggs are laid and the caterpillars emerge. Once the child is born it is cared for by its parents until if turns into a full butterfly, at about 13, in butterfly years. Once it gets its first pair of wings it ventures out on its own to form its own cocoon.

There are some natural predators to the Monarch, mainly birds, which can tolerate the Monarch’s poison. Grackles, Cardinals, Scrub Jays, Pinyon Jays, Sparrows, Robins, and Brown Thrushes can all eat Monarchs. Different species of Asian ladybugs will feast on monarch eggs and larva.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 1:52 pm and is filed under container gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.