In Iowa: Better luck next year

The fall monarch butterfly migration to Mexico will not be greatly swollen by recruits from my milkweed patch, but I expect at least a few of my progeny to make the trip.

Notwithstanding my less than stellar butterfly production, the cultivation of milkweed plants and the opportunities they present for observing the monarch's amazing life cycle have been well worth the effort.

The milkweed patch and its many denizens — some good, others much less so — have entertained my wife, Corinne, and me this summer and retaught us many forgotten grade-school lessons.

Those lessons seemed less important back in the 1950s when monarchs were as common as flies. But now that their numbers are in steep decline, helping them is not only fun and educational but also beneficial.

The milkweed patch itself — 28 each of butterfly, swamp and common milkweed plants — has brightened the lawn. Both the butterfly and swamp milkweed plants have put forth profusions of lovely blooms, orange and lavender, respectively, which have attracted monarch butterflies and a cross section of wasps, hornets and bumblebees, all drawn to their nectar.

With the assistance of those pollinators, the swamp and butterfly milkweed flowers have developed numerous seed pods that will help me expand next year's patch.

Shortly after the monarchs' visits, which began in early July when the plants were barely a month old, we began to notice their distinctive larvae crawling upon and gnawing the leaves of the plants. On any given day we could count at least 10 caterpillars in various stages of development.

But if any of those larvae ever advanced to the pupa stage, they did so beyond our notice. We learned that they seldom attach their pupas to the milkweed plants on which they feed — because, I'm guessing, their voracious siblings would chew off the stem to which it was attached.

If they crawled off and pupated on nearby raspberry or wild rose stems, you could not prove it by us.

The fun intensified two weeks ago when the Cedar Rapids-based Monarch Research Project provided a small pop-up mesh tent that we situated atop a portion of the milkweed patch. The idea was to provide a safe environment for the caterpillars and keep them from wandering off so that we could observe the transformations from larva to beautiful chrysalis to adult butterfly.

Within three days of erecting the tent, we transferred 19 caterpillars from adjacent milkweed into its supposedly secure confines. For several additional days we enjoyed watching the caterpillars convert the greenery into frass (one of several new words I've learned) and thought we were on our way to releasing as many as 19 butterflies for their fall migration.

But as cosmically unfair as it may seem, the gentle and defenseless caterpillars have enemies — mostly other insects that want to eat them or kill them for other less understandable reasons.

Having long been aware of this fact of life, I made an effort to remove wasps and hornets with a minnow bucket dip net and squish ants and the aptly named stink bugs between my fingers.

Apparently, however, I have not been sufficiently vigilant.

Though I found just one dead caterpillar in the tent, all but two fat caterpillars and the three that made chrysalises have since disappeared, leaving my wife and me to anticipate their release as butterflies with a renewed commitment to do better next year.