Gimme Shelter

Butterfly Grove, Pismo Beach, CA, Photo by Kathy Vilim

Gimme Shelter

A shadow passes overhead.  I look up to see orange wings.  A monarch butterfly is passing overhead, slowly, playfully with another monarch butterfly.  I am working in the OVF gardens, and I stop to watch them. They fly so free that it lightens my heart.  They are flying over a plot that contains one milkweed plant and one sage plant, the perfect combination for the monarch butterflies.

The milkweed plant (Asclepias) is not so much a nectar source for the monarchs as is the sage, but the milkweed attracts them because it is a host plant, a larval source. The female monarch will lay her eggs on the milkweed knowing the young caterpillars will have food when they emerge.  She can lay hundreds of eggs on a single plant, and they will take in milkweed toxin that will protect them from being eaten by birds.

When autumn is in the air, the great monarch migration begins.  Unlike their east coast cousins, our California monarchs do not migrate to Mexico.  Instead, they migrate to overwintering groves on the California coast. Along the coast there are no freezing overnight temperatures.  The monarchs cluster together high up in Eucalyptus trees, wings closed, to keep warm when the sun is not out. One of the largest of these overwintering groves is close by in Pismo Beach. Now, in  January, there will be a mating frenzy at the overwintering groves, and the females will depart with eggs to lay. They will fly low looking for milkweed host plants.

While the monarch butterflies are traveling to and from their California overwintering grounds, they need waystations where they can rest.  On their way out to the grove, they will continue to fatten up on nectar, and on their departure from the grove they will be looking for milkweed.

I have had the great pleasure of camping next to Pismo Beach’s Monarch Grove.  For several weeks I lived among the orange ballerinas of the sky, observing their daily routine of resting all together at night and then dancing in the mid-day sun.  I felt so free then, as they were free. And I left there committed to caring about what happens to them. How can a female butterfly find milkweed in the city?

The answer is private and community gardens. Places like the community gardens at Ocean View Farms are wonderful resources for the monarch butterflies.  The organic garden is full of life. What a great California waystation we could have by planting for the monarchs at our community gardens. I can envision monarchs flitting about the vegetable plots.  All they need is milkweed and a nectar source like sage. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if each of us planted just one of those plants and gave our traveling monarchs a rest stop?

Remember: If you want to help the monarchs, it's best to grow native milkweed plants that die back and encourage the monarchs to migrate rather than tropical milkweed that can interrupt their breeding cycles.