Milkweed can grow in a wide variety of environments from roadsides and abandoned lots to the edge of fields, meadows, and ...

Both the milkweed tussock and the monarch caterpillars eat the cardiac glycoside-laden milky sap of milkweed and have evolved mechanisms to retain those toxins in their bodies after metamorphosing ...

Both the milkweed tussock and the monarch caterpillars eat the cardiac glycoside-laden milky sap of milkweed and have evolved mechanisms to retain those toxins in their bodies after metamorphosing ...

Because milkweed has been decimated, it can be hard to find, so you’ll want to know where to get milkweed and how to grow it before you bring home your first monarch caterpillar.

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.

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.

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.

Their caterpillars exclusively eat the leaves of a native wildflower called milkweed and the amount of it growing in North America has plummeted. In the state of Illinois alone, milkweed numbers ...

In order to survive, monarch caterpillars need to consume milkweed at a constant rate, tending to leave milkweed plants bare within a day or so.

The Tennessee Department of Transportation is bringing back a popular program aimed at helping butterflies in celebration of National Pollinator Week.

In Illinois, the egg count fell from about 15 eggs, caterpillars or pupas per 100 milkweeds during the highest count in May, to just 10 per 100 during the highest count in July.