A BEAUTY … AND A BEAST?

Article and Photos by Linda Rippert, FBMG F2004

 

 

A Monarch butterfly is a beautiful thing to see flying leisurely around your garden. Are you doing as much as you can to encourage the survival of this species?

 

Every home should have some milkweed plants to feed the baby caterpillars and some nectar plants to feed the adult butterflies. A huge amount of information is available on the internet at: www.monarchwatch.org. A wide variety of topics is available including:

· Monarch Waystation Program

· Monarch Biology

· Rearing Monarchs

· Milkweed

· Butterfly Gardening

· Migration & Tagging

· In the Classroom

· Ordering from Monarch Watch Shop

 

Milkweed, Monarchs and More is a field guide that is chock full of information and only costs $9.95 from Monarch Watch. It shows a gallery of various milkweed plants and the locales they cover. The largest section is on the many kinds of arthropods that live in the milkweed community, especially insects and spiders. Excellent photos and color coded symbols (denoting herbivores, milkweed eaters, nectivores, predators, parasites, decomposers or scavengers and simple passersby) with concise information make for easy ID of creatures in your gardens.

 

Monarchs Need Our Help!

A “waystation” is an intermediate station between the locations in the U.S. where Monarchs live during the breeding year and during migration and the overwintering sites in Mexico. It is easy to visualize the value of resource-rich waystations along the monarch’s route of migration. Without nectar from flowers to feed the butterflies and without milkweeds to feed the caterpillars along the entire route during the spring and summer months, the hope for successive generations is greatly diminished. The monarchs need you to help by creating Monarch Waystations in home gardens, schools, parks, zoos, nature centers, field margins, along roadsides, and on other unused plots of land. A major effort is needed to restore milkweeds to as many locations as possible.

 

You can fill out a certification application online to make your yard a Monarch Waystation—it’s easy and you will be approved almost immediately. Your name will be listed on the online registry of waystations. Mine is #690 of about 1300 waystations listed at the present time. Thousands more are needed to help replenish the habitats and resources that are dwindling daily due to farming practices, new developments, highway management practices, etc.

 

Learn as much as you can about this beautiful butterfly and share what you learn with as many others as possible. Together we will help preserve the Monarch butterfly for future generations to enjoy.

 

Now comes the BEASTY part of this article!

If you have a compost pile, you may have already seen one of these critters in your yard or garden. Many of us have never seen one.

 

Mole crickets are superbly adapted to life underground. Their

1-1/2 to 2” long bodies are brown and cylindrical and are

covered with very short velvety hairs. Their front legs are

modified for digging, being broad and armed with stout teeth.

The antennae are short, and the wings are rather short,

covering about half of the abdomen. They will feed on almost

any plant (mostly the roots) including vegetables, sugar cane,

and ornamentals and will also eat small insects. They are

nocturnal creatures and will fly about at night in search of new

food resources or mates.

Female Mole Cricket