The (Little) Monarch Caterpillar ‘Rescue’

Mike Kelly, conservation chair and secretary

On the California Native Plant Society’s List-serve Brian Godrey posted that the small Milkweed plants they bought with Monarch butterfly eggs on them hatched into voracious caterpillars eating down the leaves to nothing, which would mean the death of the caterpillars since they eat only Milkweed plants. They appealed for help to save them. I’ve read several such reports on NextDoor. Nurseries and others shouldn’t be selling small plants with eggs that can hatch and not have enough leaves to eat to survive.

Cindy Burrascano, long-time member of both the Friends and CNPS, offered to move the caterpillars to mature narrow leaf Milkweed plants in our Black Mountain restoration sites. Brian and his wife Janet agreed and Cindy, Beth Mather, and I visited them and learned a lot about Monarchs and their eggs and caterpillars and their appetites! It took forever to find the tiny caterpillars and carefully move them from their plants to the Milkweed branches Beth brought for the transport.

We brought them right away to one of our sites and transferred them to a big, mature Milkweed (Asclepias fasicularis). In fact this plant is one that a Monarch butterfly had visited and sipped nectar on earlier the same day, as photographed by Beth Mather.

Monarch caterpillar on a Milkweed

Monarch butterfly sipping nectar on Milkweed blossoms at Friends’ restoration site.

Tarantula hawk visiting Milkweeed plant. A common visitor, it comes for the nectar, as do aphids and other insects.