Nature is Never Spent

If you keep an eye on North American nature media at all, you've probably heard about the decline of the monarch butterfly and the call for a "milkweed corridor" to help replace lost habitat and food sources along the monarch's migration routes.

( In case you haven't... )


So... there's an effort to get as many people to plant as much milkweed in as many places as possible along the migration routes. I've tried sowing wildflower seed before, but haven't been very successful: I chose a steep site where the seeds either washed away in heavy rains, or germinated and then succumbed to a spring drought. But this year, I have ordered milkweed and other wildflower seeds and I'm determined to make it work. If you're interested too, here are some resources I'm using:

Milkweed Seed Finder - The Xerxes Society (a great resource for all kinds of invertebrates) has a tool to help you find milkweed seeds from vendors in your local area. There's also a link to species maps so you can find out which milkweeds are native to your region. Most seed companies I looked at will take orders online and ship to you.

Native American Seed Company - a source for native plant seeds. Their website and catalog also have a lot of educational material and other resources. (I read the catalog cover-to-cover like a book! Because I'm that kind of nerd. :)

How to Get Texas Native Milkweed Seeds to Germinate - not just for Texans! This expert has developed what he feels is the most successful way to germinate the seeds. It's a very fussy process, but when each little seed is valuable, I'm sure it's worth it.

Growing Milkweeds - This guide gives more options for propagating milkweed, including growing them from cuttings.

Asclepias database - The Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's database listing of Milkweeds. It includes photos and common names and is pretty good for identifying species you may find in the wild. (Aside: how awesome would it be to have a respected wildflower center named after you? Go Ladybird!)

Since this seed propagation business is likely to be a multi-year project (especially since it's already effectively summer here) the other thing I'm doing is trying to protect any established milkweeds I find. In our pasture, there are a couple of butterfly milkweed plants my dad and I discovered years ago. My dad likes photography and I like both photography and insects, so he drove posts into the ground next to the plants to protect them from being mowed down during haying. This year I located a green milkweed plant and staked it out as well. (The same plant, I believe, that was being eaten by a monarch larvae in September 2012!) I'm putting a reminder in my calendar so that, hopefully, later in the year I can collect some seeds myself.



Asclepias viridis

In my neighborhood, there used to be four or five square blocks of undisturbed forest remaining among the houses, apartments and businesses that have been built in the past 20 years. It was an area thick with tall, straight oak trees and an understory characteristic of mature forest. A few years ago, one block of the forest was cleared to build a medical clinic, and most recently, last fall another block was knocked down and burned to make way for a new church. (That was particularly heartbreaking. They even bulldozed and leveled a small creek, and I knew for a fact that the area had been habitat for a lot of rabbits and at least one pair of foxes, not to mention the wild mice and birds, turtles, frogs and who knows what else.)

I still walk there because it's quiet, without a lot of traffic, and the other day while I was out in late evening, my eye caught some bright color where there used to be just scrubby dirt and a few grasses. It was wildflowers around the back edges of the clinic.

Someone seeded this mix of flowers deliberately. I can always tell because they contain flowers I never see in self-sowing areas free from recent human interference -- especially poppies. People buy a "wildflower mix" seed packet and it's not made for the particular region or local area where it's being planted. Same with the highway department. Some of their highway beautification flowers are native to the area, some aren't. But they're beautiful, they do well, and they're much better for wildlife than the old mown, flooded and sun-baked ditches. One bit of evidence: yesterday among the wild oat grasses and evening primrose, I spotted at least four gorgeous, happy little green dragonflies, young Eastern Pondhawks, the first I've seen this season.

I learned this flower as hairy phacelia, but the USDA Plant Database calls it "Fuzzy Phacelia," which I love almost as much as the Latin, Phacelia hirsuta. The variety seems to be limited to the mid-south and central U.S. It's very common here in April and May.

Happy (belated) May Day!

The pear blossoms are almost spent, giving way to redbuds first, and now the dogwoods and wisteria are going strong.

I think this is the stripiest Spring Beauty I've ever found!

Hesperis matronalis


The first time I "discovered" this flower was in Wisconsin one May, growing all over hillsides and on the riverbank behind a country church. It's non-native but naturalized all over, including here in my little hometown swamp with the baldcypress.

In the pasture at the farm, a whole group of these. I've always loved their veins. They're the most common violets on my family place. (I saw a few on top of the mountain two days later.)


Viola sororia priceana