Raising Monarchs, Waving Goodbye
A small story of growth and metamorphosis
First it was the neighbor’s swan plants, counting the vivid yellow and black caterpillars on them as we walked past, and then I discovered it was a “thing” in New Zealand — growing the plants and looking after the monarchs until they were full-grown butterflies.
I’ve loved monarchs since I was a child, and one of the pleasures of having a NZ garden is watching them flap and flutter past; they often look like drunks wandering home from the pub! But they are large, unmissable, with beautiful orange and black wings, so I, too, “caught the bug”.
It started with a friend who gave me some swan plants to grow — they are also commonly known as milkweed. I wondered how long it would be before a monarch came and laid some eggs. Apparently, they’d already done so. Within a couple of weeks, I found tiny caterpillars, no more than a few millimeters long (quarter inch). Those began to grow, fairly slowly, and my plants kept up.
I also knew that they could be attacked by wasps and praying mantises, so I made sure the plants were just inside a protected area where there was light and air.
Almost overnight, two of the caterpillars grew into very large specimens indeed — and wow, did their eating take off! It was fun to get up close and…
