Got Milk(weed)?

If you’ve driven down Smith Neck Road this summer you may have noticed a well-tended stretch of roadside adjacent to DNRT’s hayfield, just south of the entrance to our Smith Farm Reserve.  DNRT has two dedicated volunteers to thank for these efforts – Steve Bliven and Manny Rebello – neighbors who generously offered their time to keep the area mowed for the benefit of walkers and our farmer.

You may have also noticed this stretch of tidy grass is interrupted by a rather large clump of plants and wondered if Steve and Manny somehow had perpetual equipment malfunctions in this one particular spot, or needed their eyesight checked.  Why else would they leave these plants in the way?  Because they’re milkweed!

Common Milkweed (Asclepius syriaca) is a flowering plant native to Massachusetts, and its existence in this location is no accident.  Milkweed is of vital importance to monarch butterflies, being the host plant for monarch eggs and the only plant developing caterpillars will eat.  Clumps of milkweed, such as one at the Smith Farm roadside, are particularly important as they allow caterpillars to crawl between plants, offering a robust and reliable food source for the 7 to 17 days they remain in the caterpillar stage of their lifecycle.

All season Steve and Manny carefully mowed and weed whacked around this ever-growing clump of milkweed to ensure its survival.  At times their care was so devoted that this Land Manager teased them about singing lullabies to the plants at night and feeding them warm bottles of fertilizer.  Milkweed that is still standing in August and September is perhaps the most important of all, as the eggs laid on these plants will turn into the adults that migrate south to Mexico in the last stage of a spectacular multi-generational migration.

There are approximately four generations of monarch butterflies that emerge throughout the year; the first generation is tasked with migrating from Mexico to the southern United States in the spring; the second and third generations emerge and lay eggs in the north but do not have any role in migration; and the fourth generation, those that are born on milkweed in late summer and early fall, will trek south towards the forested mountains in central Mexico where they overwinter.  These are the butterflies and caterpillars we are seeing now, and what Manny and Steve have worked so hard to support.

As fall approaches, Manny and Steve will hang up their maintenance equipment and break out some paper bags for the next stage of their volunteer work – collecting ripe seed pods so that the seeds can be distributed within the interior fields at Smith Farm and hopefully emerge as plants next spring, beginning the cycle all over again.  Next time you see a monarch at Smith Farm it might be thanks to these two monarch ambassadors and amazing volunteers!