Royal Conundrum - Killing the Monarch Butterfly with "Kindness"

The monarch butterfly population has been in serious decline for years now, something many gardeners know. To compensate for habitat loss, gardeners have been encouraged to plant more milkweeds, the insect's larval host plant. But this has led to unforeseen negative consequences, especially in warm winter regions of the U.S.

Native milkweeds can be hard-to-impossible to find, so the tropical, showy "scarlet" milkweed has become ubiquitous in garden centers across the country. This plant, Asclepias curassavica, is native to the American tropics and has spread to pantropical regions worldwide. It has become invasive in some areas, and threatens to become a pest in South Florida. 

Many monarch butterflies harbor a protozoan, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), that can weaken the adult, prevent the pupa from emerging from the chrysalis, or deform the wings. Monarchs visiting milkweeds deposit spores when they visit milkweeds. Normally, migration culls weakened individuals, and the OE spores die when the plants die back in winter. The plants grow back in spring and summer with fresh, uninfected leaves. But in areas with warm winters tropical milkweed grows all year, thus maintaining high levels of OE spores. Areas of Georgia, coastal Carolinas, Florida and the Gulf Coast have become hotspots of infection.

Monarch on Scarlet Milkweed

Apart from the immediate threat to individual monarchs, year-round milkweed is also, probably more ominously, threatening the migration itself. The presence of the milkweed affects the butterfly's hormonal balance, and works as a trigger to make it reproduce. So monarchs that find themselves in areas with warm winters don't migrate, and a year-round population gets established. With increasing warming trends this area of permanent, sickly individuals will only increase. 

Migration plays a critical role in maintaining a robust gene pool, for it culls badly infected individuals, which simply don't survive the trip. But migration may play other vital roles as well, in ways  we haven't discovered. 

Some organizations like the Xerces Society and the Florida Native Plant Society actively campaign against the use of tropical milkweeds. Some people, though, citing the drastic declines in the monarch population, feel that keeping the numbers up is of primary importance. 

Weaning gardeners away from tropical milkweed is going to be a monumental project, especially since it was promoted so aggressively as a solution to monarch population decline. 

Monarch on Asclepias curassavica

In and of itself, I'm not particularly heartbroken over the loss of scarlet milkweed in our yard. Due to neglect, they've sort of died out this spring anyway. It is a water hog, and the stems quickly get leggy and woody. It also is a magnet for aphids and spider mites, which would make any self-respecting female monarch look for greener pastures. 

Aphid-Infested Milkweed

Finding natives or even native seeds, is going to be a long, drawn out process. Some mail order nurseries offer native milkweed species that theoretically would grow here, but I'd have a better chance with offspring originating  much closer to home. 

Even though they might be the same species, a plant grown in the mid-Atlantic or Midwest would be quite different genetically from one that has adapted to South Florida conditions. They might not even look the same, they might not  survive, and they certainly wouldn't do anything to maintain genetic diversity. Ecologically even North Florida differs greatly from the southern part of the state.

Asclepias incarnata, "Swamp Milkweed," a Native

But there's a further complication!

Whether it comes to weather patterns, the density of bear fur, and many other things, matters often are much more complicated when it comes to the southern peninsula of Florida. It seems that there is an established, non-migratory monarch population south of Lake Okeechobee.  The most-studied migration routes don't cover us, especially on the sw coast, though we might get a few strays. I have had basically year-round monarchs since I began butterfly gardening around 1995. Over the years I have seen newly-emerged monarchs with deformed wings, but not a lot. Even without the scarlet milkweed, all of our native milkweeds might not go completely dormant during our winters, so a small population could persist theoretically without our help. The assumption has to be that the infection rate in our monarch population is close to 100%. 

So, in a way, it doesn't matter whether we keep planting Asclepias curassavica, but it goes against the grain now that I'm aware of a problem. While I don't like the plant, and getting rid of it would not stop the problem of diseased butterflies, it still seems somehow that replacing it with its cousins that "belong here" would be ethically as well as esthetically better. Now comes the hard part - actually doing it. 

Clean Sweep

I've never managed to keep a  neat garden, and neighbors and walkers tell me they like my flowers. Still, I worry that the subtext is, "Your yard is an unholy mess, but at least it's colorful." Finally, old age, an arm injury still lingering after cleaning up after Irma in 2017, and my general sleaze coalesced into the proverbial "perfect storm" landscape-wise, and I had to hire somebody to clear-cut the mess.

Chaos is the Opposite of a Garden

Phyla nodiflora, "Fogfruit," makes a wonderful flowering natvie ground cover that attracts many pollinators, the lovely white peacock butterfly included. It was invading the driveway, and  had crept, kudzu-like, over a stack of paving blocks, 6 bags of mulch, and a patch of wickedly spiny agave, itself out of control even though I had been attacking it regularly.

Phyla nodiflora - Good Pollinator Plant

Sea purslane, Sesuvium portulacastrum, another desirable native ground cover,  was smothering a pot of lotus and a nice patch of Heliotropium amplexicaule. It also presented a bad tripping hazard for anybody brave enough to make a foray into the "jungle." Thickets of scorpion-tail, scattered scarlet sage, and blue porterweed competed for light. Swaths of gaillardias and mounds of dune sunflower were flopping over onto the neighbor's driveway. The gravel swale, where I had nourished the fond idea of creating a meadow of blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium), was instead a mess of moisture-loving opportunists. A dead palm tree and deformed Red Geiger, both courtesy of Hurricane Irma, completed the picture of utter surrender.

Even the rosiest of glasses couldn't mask the reality. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I called a garden center to restore the bare bones of  the landscape. Two truckloads of debris and over a hundred bags of mulch later, we have one of the neatest and most cared-for yard on the street, which has its pluses, but is not exactly my ideal garden.

New Look for the Front Yard

Although the yard hardly is bare, the new space comes with a cost beyond what the garden center charged. For years our yard has been one of the very few landscapes in our neighborhood to offer  significant amenities of pesticide-free shelter, food and water for animals. Now in its rather barren state those amenities, especially the shelter, are much-reduced.

 However, we do not want to return to what it had become, which was by no means a garden. One thing I have learned is that the garden is as much about space as it is about plants. Without space,  there is no focal point, no rest for the eye or the soul. If the garden is neither  pleasant for walking or viewing, it is a failure, regardless of the beauty of individual plants. The very word "garden" signals the imposition of some kind of order. A  "wild garden" is a contradiction in terms.

So now, I have to recreate some of the lost habitat without losing the harmony of the space. As the old plants begin to resurface through the mulch, I have to organize them into well-defined beds, augmented perhaps with potted specimens. The self-discipline to pull out the surplus will be hard for me to maintain, but if I don't, the mess will re-establish itself quickly. That should provide motivation enough, because the yard really had become horrible and impassable.

Pots for Color

Given the fact that the yard is so small, I also need to ensure that the majority of the plants do more than one job. The agaves don't exactly fit that requirement, though dragonflies like to perch on their upright leaves, and pollinators love the flowers when they appear finally. But we both love the sculptural quality of the plants. A Red Geiger volunteer seedling will fill the space left by the agaves, and all will have enough room for the next several years. Though not a native, the Geiger will be a multi-purpose asset, and deserves its own post.

Wish me luck!

Summertime Blues 2 - Blue Butterflies

More summertime blues - (although they fly all year) - are tiny butterflies. The Cassius Blue and Ceraunus Blue butterflies breed in the yard, and it's possible that we have had visits from Eastern Pygmy Blues, since we are not far from the salt marshes where they and their larval plants thrive.

Generally the Florida Blues fly very close to the ground. Their flight is fast and erratic, and they don't seem to perch long enough for me to id them. Blink and you'll miss them. Their underwings are drab, and they fold their wings when perching. But you glimpse flashes of startling blue when they flutter to another spot.

They are tiny butterflies. The Ceraunus Blue has a maximum wingspan of  0.7 - 1.2 inches. The Cassius Blue is the same size or a little larger at the bottom range. The Eastern Pygmy Blue, one of the tiniest butterflies in the world, maxes out at  0.7 -0.9 inches.

They are among the "Gossamer-Winged" butterflies, and the delicate iridiscent blue of their upper wings makes that a very apt description. Black and white banded antennae are another characteristic of butterflies in this family, Lycaenidae, which also contains the Hairstreaks.

Ceraunus Blues and Neptunia pubescens

The Ceraunus Blue is quite common in Florida. It breeds as far north as central Florida, west to Texas and California, and south to Central America and the West Indies. Both males and females have one eyespot on each hindwing. The eyespot is quite prominent on the underside of the wing because it is large in relation to the size of the butterfly, and partially ringed with bright orange. Males are a shimmery true blue on top, while females are darker and can appear almost black.

Garden abundance of Ceraunus Blues is said to be low, but we seem to have a resident population. One of its larval host plants is Neptunia pubescens, "Tropical Puff" or "Yellow Puff."  We have a large clump or colony on one side of the driveway. This prostrate spreading legume has a delicate fern-like appearance due to its bipinnately compound leaves and tiny leaflets. When it thrives it arches and tumbles all over itself, and from a distance looks dense. However its fine texture does allow grasses, sedges and other weeds to invade it, so it requires a little maintenance - no water.

When it gets ratty looking I cut it back to the ground, and it regenerates beautifully. Indeed, care should be used in introducing it into the garden because it can be difficult to eradicate. Surrounded by concrete and brick, ours is pretty well neutralized, but I do need to trim it periodically to keep it out of the roadway. Neptunia is a "sensitive" plant, and the leaflets collapse as soon as they are touched - that poses some problems in drawing it!

The butterflies lay their eggs on the flower buds. The eggs, larvae and pupae are so tiny I've never been able to find even one. Neptunia flowers occur in "powder puff" heads, with bright yellow petals and numerous stamens. It doesn't produce enough flowers at one time to be truly showy, but evidently it flowers enough to sustain the Blues.

Perching Cassius Blues can be identified by the "zebra" striping on their underwings. This may be hard to see in my photo, but I can't enlarge it more without losing even more detail. They have 2 eyespots on the hindwing. Both sexes are blue on their topwings, though the female is paler wiith more brown than the male. This species is common throughout Florida, excluding the panhandle. They also range from south Texas, the West Indies, and south to Argentina.

Cassius Blue on Plumbago scandens

They lay their eggs on various legume and leadwort species. I used to have more of them because I grew the Florida native Plumbago scandens. This plant is problematic in the yard because it  resists training and scrambles over anything and everything in its path. Its small white flowers are attractive, but the buds and seed pods are extremely sticky, and if you or your pet gets them tangled in hair/fur, the only solution is to cut them out. I took out most of it, but one plant somehow escaped my grim reaping, so I am going to try once again to train, or at least contain it, just for the butterflies.

Milkpea (see my Jan.8, 18 post), a plant I vainly try to eradicate in the yard, is another larval host for Cassius and Ceraunus Blues. I called a temporary truce until  they had a chance to bring up a brood or two, but the milkpea is getting totally out of control in some places, so that's going to end soon.

Blues like to nectar on Phyla nodiflora, "Fogfruit," among other flowers. Phyla is also a magnet for the beautiful White Peacock butterfly, which uses it as a larval host. This plant, another member of the Verbena family so popular with pollinators, can be trained into a beautiful hanging basket. One of my brothers had a trick of looping the flower stalk around itself and then sliding it up quickly to pop off the head. He used to shoot the heads at me while we waited for the school bus. I tried, but never managed the snap.

Phyla nodiflora and Ceraunus Blue

Sources: Butterflies through Binoculars: A Field, Finding and Gardening Guide to Butterflies in Florida. Glassberg, Minno & Calhoun. Oxford U. Press, 2000. Plate 16 and facing page, pp. 78-81.

Florida Butterfly Gardening. Minno & Minno. U. Press of Florida, 1999. pp. 75-77.

Florida's Fabulous Butterflies. Emmel & Kenney. World Publications, 1997. pp. 18-19.