Milkweed. Get ready for the Monarchs to devour it to a nub.

Looks like it's asclepias curassavica - scarlet milkweed

Yep, milkweed. I planted some a few years ago, now they self-seed, but always right against the pavers.

I have it, too. It is milkweed, a favorite of monarchs, they eat it voraciously. I would put it in a part of the yard where you don't mind volunteers. Spreads readily. Will transplant well, just keep it watered for a few days after moving it.

Hi
have a few ?? about this Planted a couple completely devoured by caterpillars down to the roots lol Thought planting more would spread the feast nope got even more caterpillars . While it does resprout is still eaten to the ground .. How do you manage this?? Would giant milkweed be a better choice ?? Another ?? If the caterpillars run out of milkweed what happens ?? Apparently they can eat no other type of plant.? thanks
gary

One way to help 'manage' how much they eat is to encourage cardinals to nest in your yard. The parents will pick a patch of milkweed clean while feeding their young, leaving the milkweed damaged, but alive long enough to flower and go to seed. However, it would seem, from my observation, that once the chicks are old enough to fly, the cardinals lose interest in the caterpillars and start focusing more on seed. And while the cardinals kept my milkweed clean of cats, they completely ignored the black swallowtail cats on parsley 3-4 ft away from the milkweed. But this means you will also have to hide milkweed in other areas if you want a constant presence of Monarchs.

Bluejays are supposedly good caterpillar hunters as well and you can lure them in by putting a small tin of peanuts in or near a bed you want protected. And they will even go for tomato hornworms. I would test this, but I haven't seen any blue jays since about June.

I was lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look @ it) this summer w/ paper wasps patrolling my milkweed patch - plants grew HUGE & flowered & produced lots of seedpods & a few caterpillars managed to elude the wasps & survived to pupate.

The heavy rains caused many of the seeds to sprout as well. I had more than a dozen plants (more now) & they got to 4 feet easily - it was lovely to see monarchs all over the flowers for most of the summer. I have both the traditional scarlet & the yellow-flowered varieties

Oh & if you put out black sunflower seed, cardinals will surely find you....

Many people have these plants specifically so they can be eaten by monarch caterpillars. Asclepias is the only genus they can eat.

Hi
Interesting thought the reason they ate milkweed was to take up the toxins to ward off birds .?? have whole families of both cardinals and bluejays at the feederl If they were eating caterpillars sure didn't make a dent in the population lol
purple So if they run out of milkweed they die??
Like the monarchs just need to find a balance lol Thanks gary

Yeah, if there isn't enough food they will wander away from the plant and likely starve. I have seen two small chrysallises in my yard where it looked like the cats tried to go through the process, but neither one ever hatched. My guess is they just did not have the energy stored up enough to make it through the metamorphosis.

Cardinals are the only ones I have seen grabbing caterpillars from my milkweed. One of the interesting things about nature is that for every defense mechanism, there is a predator with the means to get past it. But I just saw a Blue Jay in my yard this morning when I got back from running the kids to school. Hopefully it will stick around and I can see what all it goes after.

The caterpillars of most butterflies (or moths) are able to eat a wider variety of host plants, but everything I've always read says Asclepias is the only thing monarch cats can eat. This is part of the reason their numbers are declining, people 'killing weeds' and not understanding what is eating their 'wildflowers' so spraying bug spray. Their winter habitat in Mexico is also being decimated, it's an extremely tough time for them. This is why people often 'raise' the caterpillars inside their house, to tilt the odds back in their favor a tiny bit.

Here's a pic from about 10-11 years ago, my daughter is taking some of the last newly hatched ones outside to warm in the sun, in preparation to fly to Mexico. I'm not sure if the same one flies from OH (where this pic was taken - or wherever up north they might be at that time of year, 8/30,) or if it does the caterpillar thing once more farther south first.

It would better to find your own first-hand info though, I'm absolutely not an expert, just a fan. Also not involved with monarchs since moving to AL, haven't seen any, although the yard is full of nectar plants that other butterflies are constantly covering. I'm trading for some seeds anyway though, just in case a monarch that needs a place to lay eggs comes by. Previous years' seed attempts have failed to sprout, hope these finally get some going here! I was able to buy plants in OH, but have never seen any kind of A. for sale here.

Well Purple, people have been told that anything that isn't turf or a gardenia is a weed for so long that it's hard for a lot of people shake that concept. My In-Laws are the type that want a good looking foundation garden around their house, but they don't want to do the work. They just want the beds to 'exist'. I've tried telling them that going with natives will require the least amount of work, but they insist on having 'exotic' plants that require... well... work. Weekend before last I was helping my father-in-law with cleaning one bed and he said, "I'm almost to the point of just removing these beds and replacing them with turf. When I mentioned how much money and upkeep that would take he simply responded, "I don't give a [explicative]. I have a lawn crew to take care of that stuff and I don't have to do anything but sign the check."

A lot of the articles I read say that, "Gardeners are becoming more and more aware of how their practices affect their environment and are turning to more eco-friendly and organic methods." But as I sat in traffic yesterday watching oil burn out of one truck's exhaust and listening to another that was obviously running without its catalytic converter, it hit me: Gardeners might be becoming more aware, but the number of people who just don't give a [explicative] is far greater than the number of gardeners. I do my part, as I am sure we all do, but I get this nagging feeling it will have to take some world-wide cataclysmic event, a la Day after Tomorrow, to really wake people up. And by then it will be too late. All we can do is keep planting milkweed and other host plants in our yards and hope that we can at least prevent the monarch and other butterflies... or any other critters actually from going completely extinct.