Monarch butterflies depend on a steady supply of milkweed, where they lay their eggs and where caterpillars feed. Plant milkweed -- preferably multiple plants -- to provide monarch habitat.

Right now, monarch butterflies that overwinted in Mexico and coastal California are starting their way north once again. They need food, shelter and milkweed plants to lay their eggs when they arrive.

At Sycamore Canyon School in Newbury Park, students planted a milkweed garden four years ago to provide food and shelter for both the adult butterflies and the caterpillars.

A monarch caterpillar munches on milkweed in the kitchen of Kay MacNeil’s home in Frankfort. “Monarchs must have milkweed to survive. If you don’t grow it, they won’t come,” she said.

Jim Paulus’s heart skipped a beat when the milkweed patch he is cultivating as a nursery for monarch butterflies appeared to have attracted some babes to his woods — until ...

Milkweed is considered an essential food source for adult monarchs, and it is also the one and only type of plant that the caterpillars can feed from. ... and shelter for them.

Our region’s milkweeds, including the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), swamp milkweed (A. incarnata) and butterfly weed (A. tuberosa) are amazingly complex and beautiful plants best known perhaps ...

When the eggs hatched, and caterpillars were eating and growing, the family gathered milkweed for them to eat. Their screened-in back porch became a monarch nursery. Don't Edit ...

Once hatched, caterpillars enjoy milkweed as a food source while they grow and develop into adulthood, a process that happens in the first month of a monarch’s lifespan. And, as adults, the ...

CORVALLIS – Fragile, beautiful and fascinating, butterflies flutter their way into our gardens and seem to just as quickly wing their way out.