I'M MAD AS HELL

    

     If you would like to make a small contribution to a healthier world, consider catering to the needs of butterflies and their caterpillars. A butterfly garden will not only provide great beauty from the plants, butterflies and hummingbirds which is reward enough but  give satisfaction in having done something worthwhile; a small penance for the many abuses that we have laid on our planet.

     In my home garden there is a dense planting of butterfly favourites with flowers for the imago and foliage for their larvae. Great magnets for enticing clouds of Monarchs, are forms of prairie Liatris. The 6 foot tall dense flower spikes of Meadow Blazingstar, Liatris ligulistylis and Kansas Gayfeather, Liatris pycnostachya bring in Monarch butterflies from miles around. That is fine for you and good for the adult/imago Monarch but does nothing for the caterpillar/larvae. Monarch caterpillars eat Milkweed and only Milkweed.

     If indeed, you want to do something truly worthwhile, beyond your own immediate pleasure, a butterfly garden needs foliage for the caterpillar. Carrot, dill or parsley is needed by the Black Swallowtail so I plant lots of parsley between the Agastache, Echinacea and the many milkweeds.
     The spectacular Giant Swallowtail is supposedly very rare in Ontario; nevertheless I am privileged to be visited by this rarity every summer, drawn to my garden by a Hop Tree, Ptelea trifoliata. Apparently this visitor from Florida can detect a solitary tree from a great distance. Cosmopolitan Painted Lady enjoys its’ world-wide distribution by not being so singularly fussy about the caterpillar food choices. A sure bet to bring the American Lady to set up home in your garden is by growing Pearly Everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea

     Monarch Butterflies depend entirely on Milkweed of which there are many species and closely related plants from tropical America to as far north as 52 degrees. Monarchs returning each year from their Mexican winter roosts, fly ever further north in overlapping leapfrogging generations seeking Milkweed. They depend on it. In my garden there are Swamp Milkweed, Asclepius incarnata with pink flowers; a yellow form and a white. Asclepius tuberosa with pure orange flowers and shinier thicker leaves. Since the sap of this species is clear rather than white we call it Butterfly Weed not Milkweed. These are all good hardy perennials, but a Monarch Garden would not be complete without their top-of-the-list favourite; the Mexican annual sub-shrub, Asclepius curassavica known as Bloodflower. The bicoloured flowers come in scarlet and yellow or deep red and yellow. Both the Monarchs and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are daft about them.

 The most northern species is Common Milkweed, Asclepius syriaca found in abandoned fields, roadsides and ditches. It is not included in my garden proper but I am happy to know that it is close by.

     Toronto’s Sick Kids’ Hospital in 'Information for Families' tells us that Milkweed are ‘known to be poisonous to humans’. Now you know why I am as mad as hell. I guess that I would not be allowed to choke someone but perhaps I could give them a good shake.

    My butterfly garden delights me and I would like to see more gardeners enjoying swarms of Monarchs on their favourite Milkweeds. It does not help to have them labelled as ‘poisonous to humans’. Most people know that the caterpillar and hence the butterfly derives protection from birds by being highly distasteful; due to chemicals in the Milkweed. (The butterflies are not totally immune to these poisons but they have a high tolerance.) Listing them as poisonous plants is not a public service but a disservice and the lists’ authors a public nuisance.

NOTE: Neither the first or second edition (2007) of the American Medical Association Handbook of Poisonous or Injurious Plants mentions Milkweed.