A Letter to Her Majesties

May it please Your Majesties, the Monarch Butterflies:

We are overdue for your visit.

We—varieties of milkweed known as ‘common’ and ‘poke,’ suited for your use in sun or shade respectively—have been maintained for your royal use. But it has now been one full year since your young prince (or princess; we are not competent to tell the difference, nor do we express any preference thereon) visited our growing grounds.

The young monarch’s brief stay was deemed a privilege despite the loss of leaves and the large quantity of imperial droppings left behind.

The latter notwithstanding, with great anticipation, we have awaited another royal visit.

As we ponder why none of Your Majesties seems to have graced us with your presence this year, we reassure ourselves of the quality of our lodgings, considering the large number of passers-by and long-term tenants we have hosted this season.

Here are just a few of our many guests this year.

We humbly request that next year, Your Majesties add us to your itinerary. We are certain that our other guests would pay you all due respect according to their nature.

Oh dear.

It occurs to us that nature may be the issue at hand, possibly explaining the lack of prince or princess sightings on our leaves and stems.

In hindsight, allowing supplementary structures to be built on our premises may not have been the wisest use of our real estate.

Apologies are therefore in order, and henceforth, we will engage in stern discussions with certain guests, notably, but not limited to, spiders, ants, lady beetles, and earwigs, whose appetites, we have learned, include your royal eggs and progeny.

The results of these discussions cannot be guaranteed, but we will endeavor to be persuasive.

Your loyal servants,
Asclepias syriaca
Asclepias exaltata

Editor’s Note: I (Carol) have a good-sized patch of common milkweed where there’s adequate sun, plus several shade-friendly poke milkweeds I planted at the wood’s edge. They’re both native to our area. As I write this post, both varieties have begun to set seed earlier than in prior years. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s from the severe heat wave we experienced earlier this summer. That said, just yesterday, a friend who lives less than an hour away shared photos of monarchs visiting her fully blooming milkweed. The heat would have affected her plants as well. I have read that monarchs will sometimes lay eggs after milkweed sets seed. But even if some do visit my milkweed, egg and larval survivors are a long shot considering how many predators have set up housekeeping on my plants. I’ll continue to let nature take its course, but dang! I would love to see some royal visits!

References and a Related Kids’ Book
I was surprised to learn the number and diversity of predators of monarch butterfly eggs and larvae. One study, Predators of monarch butterfly eggs and neonate larvae are more diverse than previously recognized ( in the journal Nature) identified nearly fifty.

This article is from the University of Georgia, titled Natural Enemies of Monarchs. It names additional, non-arthropod predators, with (some pretty gruesome) photos showing how they attack monarch larvae and adults.

Here’s a terrific related kids’ book.

Milkweed for Monarchs is a beautifully written non-fiction picture book by Christine Van Zandt, with gorgeous illustrations by Alejandra Barajas. I’ve recommended this book before, but it’s spot-on for today’s post about milkweed visitors, so I’m sharing it again. The book shows the monarch butterfly’s life cycle, including its reliance on milkweed. There’s a great how-you-can-help section, too.

Image Credits: Carol Doeringer.