The relationship between milkweed and monarch butterflies is pretty amazing.

Adult female monarch butterflies lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves.  Milkweed is the only plant the monarch caterpillar can eat.  The larvae feed on the leaves about two weeks, then develop into caterpillars about two inches long.

The  caterpillar forms a pupa, or chrysalis.  It resembles a waxy, green vase that becomes increasingly transparent. 

About two weeks later the caterpillar transforms into a monarch butterfly.

The butterfly inflates it’s  wings by expelling a pool of blood from it’s stomach.  Then,  on orange and black wings it flies off  to start the cycle, again.

The monarch doesn’t need camouflage.  The butterfly is protected from predators by taking in a toxic substance from the milkweed plant.

Mary Ellen Ryall  was taking a course on ethnobotany from LCO Community College when an elder lamented mowing the roadsides and destroying the milkweed.

“So why would you want to cut anything down, why would you want to do this when the creator put plants in their natural environment so you’d be able to have medicine, or native foods, wild foods, wild edibles, all these things. So coming back to Shelll Lake I already knew all his and when I cane here guess  what did I not  see growing. I didn’t see any milkweed in the whole town.”

The Shell Lake town board got behind Ryall’s efforts to restore native plant  and butterfly habitat. The  large ½ acre garden is close to town and the lake. Wood chips will line the paths.  There’ll be benches to  improve  the viewing. 

Ryall says monarch butterflies across the country  are under siege.

“If the monarch is safe, then we’re pretty safe.  But if the monarch is threatened either by the food supply or by logging or by pesticides and herbicides or by urban sprawl or by loss of agricultural land.”

Monarch butterflies originated in Mexico and made their way up north. 

Every  year they migrate  back thousands of miles to twelve isolated mountain tops in Mexico.  The butterflies return to the same mountains their ancestors left the previous spring.  Miraculously, they’re able to  find a place in Mexico they never visited before.

 “She ends up being a teacher. Because if that’s happening to a little insect with the weight of a maple leaf and with the brain size of a pin head.  And if this little butterfly can migrate for three thousand miles how intelligent can ya be.”

“So this whole thing the butterfly teaches all this. By just letting things grow. And just letting the natural world exist the way it was meant to exist. This is the world we inherited and this is the world that should be protected.”

But reports indicate  millions of butterflies are dying in Mexico from habitat destruction.

The other day Mary Ellen Ryall was walking near the future site of the butterfly and wild plant sanctuary near Shell Lake. 

She saw some white sage that had come up on its own. This  native plant is used for smudging and treating respiratory problems. She felt blessed.

“So if we would just think nature understands the relationship of plants.  And that native plants have always known  this. So, isn’t it a good idea to let native plants live and not to bring in exotics into gardens and this sort of thing. And to allow those native plants to nurture the monarch butterfly.  And in nurturing the monarch butterfly we have nurtured ourselves.”

 

I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network.