UCCE Stanislaus County Master Gardeners Rhonda Allen and Denise Godbout-Avant are looking forward to sharing their enthusiasm and knowledge about monarch butterflies with you!
Date: Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Time: 9:00 am – 10:30 am
Where: Online
Register: https://ucanr.edu/monarchs/2022/online
Link: you'll be sent a link to log in with before the class.
- Author: Denise Godbout-Avant
Life Cycle
Like all butterflies, Monarch butterflies have four life stages:
- Egg: The female Monarch lays her eggs on their sole host plant, the milkweed (Asclepias). She generally lays one egg per plant. Each egg is about the size of a grain of salt.
- Larva (Caterpillar): After 3 – 5 days, the Monarch egg hatches to a larva, also called a caterpillar, eating only milkweed leaves. They go through five instar stages over a period of 10 – 14 days as they grow from 1/16th of an inch to about two inches, molting their exoskeleton at each stage.
- Pupa: The caterpillar finds a protected place to develop its chrysalis for the pupal stage. During the next 11-15 days the pupa will change to an adult by liquifying its body while inside the chrysalis, ultimately emerging to the adult butterfly.
- Adult: In the final hours before emergence, the chrysalis becomes translucent, a crack will appear, with the Monarch butterfly freeing itself from the case. Hanging from the now-empty chrysalis case, it will spend the next few hours pumping fluid into its wings until they are firm enough to fly. Eventually it will take flight and start seeking out nectar for its 1st meal. Adult Monarch butterflies feed on flowers, which makes them pollinators. The nectar provides energy for flight, mating, and migration.
Milkweed
Migration
The Monarch migration is extraordinary with none quite like it in the butterfly world. A Monarch butterfly begins an epic one-way journey south up to 2,800 miles to a specific place where they have never been to before, where their great-grandparent spent the previous winter. It remains largely a mystery how successive generations know the route and where to spend the winter months.
Late in summer or early fall, a final generation emerges. Triggered by changes in temperature and sunlight, this generation will migrate south. Known as the “Methuselah” generation (after the biblical patriarch said to have lived 969 years), they can live up to 6 – 8 months. They do not emerge as sexually mature butterflies, being in a “sexual diapause,” so their energies can be focused on developing flight muscles and storing lipids for their long journey south and surviving the winter months.
Come spring, with warming temperatures and longer days, these butterflies will become sexually mature, feed on nectar, mate, and start moving northward, laying eggs, which will hatch to continue the annual migration cycle.
You may see migrating Monarchs this fall in your garden feeding on nectar flowers, resting on flat flowers or rocks, or drinking from water sources. Admire them, but leave them be, since they still have some distance to go to reach their wintering grounds. In California, their wintering spots are along coastal areas from Monterey area (Pacific Grove) to San Diego.
Monarchs in Trouble
In temperate areas like the Central Valley, the tropical milkweed plant (Asclepias currasavica) does not go dormant. A parasite that lives on the plant is ingested by developing caterpillars and is linked lower migration success and reductions in lifespan. Choose milkweed species that goes through winter dormancy such as narrowleaf milkweed and showy milkweed (A. fasicularis and speciosa.)
The IUCN announcement states: "The western population is at greatest risk of extinction, having declined by an estimated 99.9%, from as many as 10 million to 1,914 butterflies between the 1980s and 2021.” In addition, "The larger eastern population also shrunk by 84% from 1996 to 2014. Concern remains as to whether enough butterflies survive to maintain the populations and prevent extinction."
Sign up for our Free Class!
Date: Saturday, October 15, 2022
Time: 9:00 am – 10:30 am
Where: Stanislaus Agricultural Center, 1800 Cornucopia Way, Harvest Hall
Register: http://ucanr.edu/monarchs/2022
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Resources:
- Art Shapiro's Butterfly Site https://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/butterflies
- Butterflies in Your Garden https://ucanr.edu/sites/CEStanislausCo/files/345791.pdf
- Xerces Society - Pollinator Plants: California https://xerces.org/publications/plant-lists/pollinator-plants-California
- UC Davis Arboretum – Larval Hosts for Butterflies https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/blog/larval-host-plants-butterflies
- California Native Plant Society – Native Planting Guides https://www.cnps.org/gardening/choosing-your-plants/native-planting-guides
- Tropical Milkweed - a no grow https://xerces.org/blog/tropical-milkweed-a-no-grow
- Calscape CA native plants https://www.calscape.org/
- UC ANR Bug Squad Blog https://ucanr.edu/blogs/bugsquad/
- International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) https://www.iucn.org/
- The Monarch: Saving Our Most Beloved Butterfly, by Kylee Baumle, St. Lynn's PressMilkweed Poisoning: https://www.poison.org/articles/milkweed-can-cause-serious-poisoning-204
- Author: Denise Godbout-Avant
Plants
If you have the space, plant an oak tree! While it will take several years for the tree to mature, few plants provide more benefits to nature than an oak tree. One Valley oak tree can provide food, water, and shelter to approximately 350 vertebrate species and over 250 species of insects and arachnids.
Choose plants that bloom at different times of the year, to ensure something is always blooming during the different seasons thus providing nectar sources year-round. Include some plants which produce berries to provide food sources attractive to birds and insects.
Lawns lack variety, thus reducing your lawn space and replacing it with native plants will increase the diversity in your garden. Decreasing the frequency of mowing permits grasses to grow taller, allowing flowers to grow and bloom which would attract bees and butterflies. You can also sprinkle some daisy and clover seeds into your lawn to provide forage plants and flowers for many beneficial insects.
Water
Ponds with aquatic-loving plants can encourage amphibians such as salamanders or toads, or wetland insects such as dragonflies, to visit and set up their homes.
Butterflies engage in behavior called “puddling,” where they stop in muddy puddles for water and nutrients. You can recreate this by filling a terra cotta saucer with soil and pebbles, sink it into the ground and keep it moist. Again, change the water regularly.
Plants and rocks around the water source(s) provide shelter, camouflage, and spots for creatures like butterflies, lizards, or turtles who like to sun themselves near water.
Housing for Bees
Leave the Leaves
Leaving leaves as they drop from your trees and bushes provides food and shelter for a variety of living creatures including worms, beetles, millipedes, larvae of some butterflies and moths, toads, frogs and more. These in turn attract birds, mammals, and amphibians that rely on the smaller organisms as a food source.
Chemicals
One Step at a Time
Changing your garden into a wildlife haven will likely be a step-by-step process over a period of time. Building a garden attractive to wildlife will bring you the enjoyment of watching them and the knowledge you are helping wildlife thrive.
Resources listed provide information for ways to you to build a garden attractive to wildlife.
- Butterflies in Your Garden: https://ucanr.edu/sites/CEStanislausCo/files/345791.pdf
- Sustainable Landscaping: https://ucanr.edu/sites/stancountymg/Sustainable_Landscaping/
- Trees in Your Garden: https://ucanr.edu/sites/CEStanislausCo/files/341553.pdf
- Pollinator-Friendly Native Plants Lists: https://xerces.org/pollinator-conservation/pollinator-friendly-plant-lists
- UC IPM Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program: http://ipm.ucanr.edu/
- The Bee Gardener: The Cavities You Want to Have: https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=12785
- How to Make and Use Bee Houses for Cavity Nesting Bees: https://beegarden.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/How-to-build-and-use-bee-blocks.pdf
Denise Godbout-Avant has been a Stanislaus County Master Gardener since 2020.
/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>Native (Bee) Pollinators
Take a quiz on your knowledge of native bee pollinators, learn about the three types of pollinator nesting, and see examples of what types of plants pollinators prefer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOGDSNJJoh8&t=6s
Planting for Pollinators
Learn about the local native bee pollinators and hummingbirds you might see in your backyard, and what kind of plants they prefer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naL3BM5aP-s&t=5s
Butterflies in Your Garden
Find out how to have more butterflies in your garden, by learning which plants are required for butterflies to complete their lifecycle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHXSdtxicII&t=6s
Follow Along
Download the handouts from any of our classes by visiting our Classes and Workshops web page at https://ucanr.edu/sites/stancountymg/Classes/
This post was originally published on June 24, 2021.
/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>- Author: Anne E Schellman
They key to attracting butterflies is understanding their life cycle. Adult female butterflies seek out specific host plants on which to lay their eggs. These eggs hatch into "very hungry caterpillars." As you may recall from The Very Hungry Caterpillar storybook, caterpillars eat large amounts of plants so they can complete metamorphosis and emerge as beautiful butterflies.
During our class, you'll learn which plants attract certain butterfly species, and how to grow and care for these plants. Our speaker will also tell us how to identify common butterflies found in Stanislaus County.
You won't want to miss this class. Sign up now and don't forget to mark your calendar!
When: January 26, 2021 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Where: Zoom Webinar
How: Register at: http://ucanr.edu/butterflies/2021
Speaker: Ellen Zagory, retired Director of Horticulture, UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden