Monarch Butterfly | The Michigan Nature Guy’s Blog

Milkweed Community Title Slide showing clockwise from upper left–Great Spangled Fritillary, Black-sided Pygmy Grasshopper, Monarch, Red-Blue Checkered Beetle

The Milkweed plant community is a fascinating place to just stand around in and watch what comes by. I have a talk “The Milkweed Community: More Than Monarchs (but Monarchs are cool!) on the many members of this community and the following are resources mentioned in that talk.

Websites about Monarch Butterflies

Monarch Watch has a helpful guide for identifying, and growing milkweeds. They also have information on Monarch conservation, biology, and different research projects including their Monarch tagging project.

The National Wildlife Federation’s Monarch Butterfly page is a good source of general Monarch information.

Monarch Joint Venture has general information including great life-cycle information.

“Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) and milkweeds (Asclepias species): The current situation and methods for propagating milkweeds” by Tara Luna and R. Kasten Dumroese. This publication explains the international program underway to conserve populations of Monarchs. It describes the migration of the butterfly and also has information on propagating Milkweed.

Monarch Butterfly Journey North has general information but also tracks the population size and migration of Monarchs

Watch for tagged Monarchs

Websites for Identifying Members of the Milkweed Community

Bug Guide is a site for “Identification, Images, & Information For Insects, Spiders & Their Kin For the United States & Canada.” The Iowa State University Department of Entomology provides this great resource. This is the first site I look at when I identify an insect.

The Herbarium of the University of Michigan provides the Michigan Flora Homepage with keys, range maps and photos of all flowering plants and ferns known in the wild in Michigan.

This site is dedicated to the conservation and identification of Bumble Bees. They have helpful drawings of the color patterns of different Bumble Bee species.

Author in a stand of Common Milkweed

Books for Identifying Members of the Milkweed Community

Brenda Dziedzic. 2019. Raising Butterflies in the Garden. Firefly Books.

Jason Gibbs, Ashley Bennett, Rufus Isaacs and Joy Landis. 2015. Bees of the Great Lakes Region and Wildflowers to Support Them: A guide for farmers, gardeners and landscapers. Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E3282. (An excellent and inexpensive guide to Michigan’s bees. My review can be found here.)

Jeffrey Hahn. 2009. Insects of the North Woods. Kollath+Stensaas. The entire North Woods series is excellent and useful for the entire state of Michigan. (see Larry Weber’s book cited below)

Mogens C. Nielsen. 1999. Michigan Butterflies & Skippers. Michigan State University Extension Bulletin E-2675.

Ba Rea, Karen Oberhauser and Michael A. Quinn. 2010. Milkweeds, Monarchs and More: A Field Guide to the Invertebrate Community in the Milkweed Patch (Second Edition). Bas Relief, LLC. This 80 page book is a great guide for the beginner and it would make a good student field guide for classroom use.

Larry Weber. 2013. Spiders of the North Woods. (Second Edition). Kollath+Stensaas.

Paul Williams, Robin Thorp, Leif Richardson and Sheila Colla. 2014. An Identification Guide: Bumble Bees of North America. Princeton University Press.

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Eleven species of milkweeds are native to Michigan. All species except the Butterfly-weed possess milky sap. Monarch butterfly larvae feed on the milkweeds’ foliage and the adults feed on the nectar of the flowers. The pod is correctly called a follicle that is a fruit that splits in half when it is mature along a single joint. Attached to the seed is a feather-like pappus allowing the seed to travel via the wind. Flower clusters are in umbels meaning the individual flower stems all come from the same point. Michigan’s five common species are:

Poke Milkweed

Poke Milkweed (Asclepias exaltata) is a woodland species, having smooth, thin, opposite, leaves that are pointed on each end. Its white flowers, tinted with lavender or green are some of the largest of our milkweeds. Hanging in loose umbels that come from the leaf axils, they are quite distinctive.

Swamp Milkweed

Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) grows where its feet can get wet. The two-toned (whitish and pink or rose) flowers, in upright clusters, bloom over a long period of time. You can often find plants with follicles that still have flower buds. Smooth, opposite, lanceolate leaves, smooth stem, and narrow upright follicles are good characters to use to recognize this species.

Common Milkweed

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) has flowers in dense spherical umbels. Their color varies from white to pink to rose to almost green. The leaves are hairy, opposite and blunt tipped. Warty, fleshy, follicles are covered with fine dense hair. This species is common in fields, woodland edges, and waste places.

Butterfly-weed flowers

Butterfly-weed (Asclepias tuberosa) has non-milky juice, alternate leaves and orange or yellow upright flower. The three photos showing the variation in flower color are all from the same stand. It grows in the Lower Peninsula and is most common in the south half.

Butterfly-weed plant and seeds

Whorled Milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) has narrow leaves in whorls of 3 to 8 and umbels of white flowers that normally appear along the upper third of the plant. This is one of our shortest milkweeds, appearing slender in habit. It grows in dry fields, roadsides, waste places, and prairies; often in large stands, that can be spotted from a moving car. It is more common in southern Michigan but there are several records from the Upper Peninsula.

Whorled Milkweed

I would encourage you to plant a few milkweeds in your landscape. Plants are available from many nurseries, the flowers are unique as well as colorful, and the Monarch Butterflies could us the help.

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Tag Archives: Monarch Butterfly

Monarch Resources

Common Michigan Milkweeds