Like a shark to blood. Plant milkweeds and they will come. You will find lots of resources through the gardenweb site, but a good place to start is the butterflies and moths site below. You can choose your location on the map to find out what species are around and what they use as host/larval plants. Hey, why stop at milkweed butterflies?

Here is a link that might be useful: Butterflies by map

Having a minimum of five Milkweed plants is a good starting point if you want to attract Monarchs. It took me several years years before Monarchs found my garden. Once they did, however, I have had them ever sinceÂ

They find the milkweeds by scent and by sight.

The monarchwatch organization recommends 15 square yards of milkweed as a minimum, but this may be a lot for the beginner to commit to. A few milkweed plants would eventually spread to fill in a 15 square yard area.

Plant it and they will come only works for areas where you regularly see monarchs flying. Plantings in western Oregon were unsuccessful, there were several years between monarch sightings on those milkweeds. But then, there are several years between monarch sightings here anyway, milkweeds or no.

In Maryland, you should definitely get Monarchs on your milkweed if you plant it. I have a very small garden and only about 3 perennial plants. I also supplement with the Tropical Milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, which is a favorite host milkweed. I recommend you obtain some perennial milkweed like A. incarnata and whatever milkweeds are native to Maryland, and grow some of the Tropical from seed. That will get you a good start.

Susan

I am reasonably certain that monarchs are able to locate milkweed by scent. Year after year, I find monarch eggs on small volunteer milkweed that is surrounded by weeds and tall grass, making it difficult to see. But the monarchs find these volunteers, and often lay eggs on them. We typically have 20 or more established milkweed plants, that are two or three feet high, and these get eggs also. In my area, Madison, Wisconsin, it takes about 10 milkweed plants concentrated in one yard to reliably attract monarchs.

I like the shark to blood analogy!! It's perect! That is how it is here. Plant it, and they will come and find it. They are even scoping out the garden centers for it and then laying their eggs on it there. In a pot or in the ground, they will find it. I see more action on my Tropical Milkweed than I do on the Swamp or Common. Some people have said that they believe it is a more tender variety of leaves and this is the reason. I don't think it matters what it's next to in the garden.

I think you will find there are many "right" answers to your questions about how much milkweed to plant to attract monarchs and how far apart to plant nectar sources.

I would say a good number for optimal attactiveness (sp?)is 10 milkweed plants. Depending on the area you could have luck with planting less. My Mom got monarchs the first season with only two plants in a neighborhood ( lived there 40+ years) where we had never seen any.

I find the best advice often times comes from local sources. I get the most monarchs in my So. Calif yard in late fall into winter. I really do not see any all summer.

I planted milkweed in my Maryland garden just last year. I bought a few swamp milkweeds and started lots of butterfly weed from seed. I was disappointed that I saw very few monarch butterflies. BUT I ended up with lots of monarch caterpillars. It was like magic, I wondered how they had found the milkweed when I wasn't looking.

maureeninmd,

This was pretty much my experience too, although after I realized the mama monarchs 'were' visiting (found eggs on MW leaves) I began to watch more closely and would see them visit. I suspect mama Monarch has to keep traveling in search of nectar if our gardens don't have a lot of nectar flowers along with the host plants. I'm trying to provide a lot of both this season and will also attempt to have nectar plants in bloom most of the season. It's a learning process and I'm sure I won't get it perfect this year but it will be far better than last year plus it's just so rewarding and lots of fun! :-)

Mary

OK, a bit of bumming around on the Internet refreshes my memory:

At a great distance, monarchs "smell" the milkweed with receptors on their antennae. Most accounts claim this can happen over a mile away. The largest claim was for twenty miles, but it likely would take a very large stand of milkweed upwind for this to happen.

As the monarchs get within sight of the plants, vision takes over to land on the actual plant.

Then, with more smell recptors on their feet, the monarch does a final assay of the plant.

So as you can see, the more plants you have, the more odor molecules will be in the air and the stronger the smell to a monarch, increasing the attraction distance.

Moths and their pheromone system for attracting mates has been studied more and five miles has been documented.

Now as to the 40-year account above, there were surely monarchs in that neighborhood all along, at least within a fraction of a mile. When a person does something deliberately to attract an animal, the person becomes more expectant and observant, spends more time looking and sees more of that animal. Planting milkweed makes it much easier because it causes the monarch to come to one small spot and linger.

The wife and I would rarely see hummingbirds in the yard, but when our interest grew and we planted flowering vines and hung a feeder, we saw lots. It wasn't because the hummingbird population exploded in our neighborhood, we just slowed them down and we looked out the window more often.

By planting milkweed or hanging feeders and being on the lookout, we are changing our behavior more than changing the behavior and location of monarchs or hummingbirds.

We have 20 to 25 milkweed plants established here. Every summer I raise a small number of monarch cats to adulthood, so I am reasonably observant of monarchs flying around the yard. Despite this, I rarely see monarchs of either sex in our yard. In a good year, I do see them at various locations around the neighborhood, when I go for a walk. But they are foraging, on the move. They must roost at night, but I have never seen this activity. Since monarchs forage during the daylight hours, if I want to see one, I have to collect the eggs, and raise caterpillars. Caterpillars forage also, but they don't move around so much!

Very interesting! Thanks larry gene.

Thanks all for your informative responses. It's very helpful knowledge you've shared.

I am just trying to find the milkweed seed for my area, I have no clue there was so many types. Where do people get seed from? Thank you

Monarch Watch sells a packet with 3 different types.

Here is a link that might be useful: Monarch Watch: Milkweed Seed Kit

My problem isn't having Monarchs in the area, nor is it in getting milkweed (A.speciosa) to grow.

It's getting them in the same place at the same TIME that's the trouble!

I see a couple of monarchs each year...and my milkweed comes up a month or so later.

AAAUUUGGHH!!!

Ideas welcome..! I can't get the tropicals to grow--tuberosa or curassavica. :(

onafixedincome- tropical milkweed is easily overwintered. I potted two plants and they flowered inside all winter(one pot also produced 3 seedlings!). I also took cuttings and they are growing roots as I write this.

I started seeds indoors at the end of February and have about 100 seedlings. This early start puts me more on pace with someone in zone 8 or above.

I also used a heated seed mat and they germinated extremely fast! will definitely use again next year.

As for monarchs finding milkweed....does anyone think it could also have something to do with their genetic map? ...like how they know to migrate to Mexico when they have never been before?

We have had monarchs for over 25 years in Minnesota and they have never missed a summer here. Even the years when there were extremely low numbers... some food for thought, Tony

I love finding eggs/cats on a host plant and I haven't spotted a single butterfly of that kind! I call them "stealth" mamas"! Right now, I've got a few cats on my croton plants...without having seen any butterfly that uses crotons. I DID see a Question Mark yesterday, which prompted me to go out and look at one of the cats in the nests on my stinging nettle. I think the cat's a Red Admiral, however.

I just can't get them to grow, cool...no matter *what* I do. Black thumb, I think. :(

Is there any way to 'prompt' the speciosa to come up a bit sooner?? It's native to the area, so it's not a climate conflict thing, I don't think...

can you buy plants at a plant sale? for instance, we have one here mothers day weekend where you can get 5 plants for 6 bucks...anything like that in your area?

if not try this next time you start seeds:

http://www.glorious-butterfly.com/tropical-milkweed.html

good luck!

Sorry for the late response. I am back for butterfly season! Larry Gene is right. If you look at a basic plant biology book that has a good plant anatomy section, you will find diagrams that show stomata on the leaves. These are kind of like pores. Simply put, they open and close on the plant leaf in response to how much water the plant has. It is how a plant transpires (releases water, CO2, etc.)Along with water, volatile gases are released. These volatile gases can contain all kinds of signalling chemicals as well as waste products. Typically, insects that eat plants (like caterpillars)look for a plant signature. Female butterflies that are looking to lay eggs are equisitely tuned to this chemical signature. Monarchs start that search using chemoreceptors in their antennae. Some butterflies also learn correct leaf shapes (pipevine swallowtails do this). Once the female lands on the plant, she scrapes the leaf, through the waxy cuticle, with her feet and samples the leaves with her chemoreceptors on the feet. If it is correct, it induces her to lay eggs.

So if you think about it, it is a concentration game. Meaning one plant is not going to put off a lot of chemicals in a field of other plants putting off chemicals. So, you need to have a high concentration of butterflies looking. So, that is why butterfly gardens are planted with masses of plants together. It increases the likely hood of a single butterfly finding the source.

Interestingly enough, there are parasitoid wasps that find their caterpillar victims by the chemicals a plant starts to put out while being chewed. Call it nature's alarm system.

Hope that makes sense,
Elisabeth

I planted milkweed last year for the first time - just two plants and had success. This year because of the rain, I've only gotten one plant in the ground, but it's got 8 caterpillars on it. I bought more plants from Wild Things booth at the Jenks Plant Festival last weekend, and one of those seedlings already had a caterpillar on it as well. I'm waiting for the ground to dry out and then I'll get everything else in the ground.

I've always planted nectaring plants - done it for years - so maybe that's why I had success with the first year of planting the milkweed.

~Laura

Too bad the shark analogy is wrong ! Major falsehood about sharks and blood. Read up on them first .