Wishing for Milkweed-Clover Honey

I felt bad—or at least nostalgic for better environmental conditions in years past—reading Hal Borland’s Nature note for July 2 in his book “Twelve Moons of the Year”.   (See my blog for July 1.) Borland describes patches of milkweed so large in the countryside that you could smell it.  He says it and clover smelled like the honey that bees would make from it.  I believe he wrote that note in the 1940s.

This reminded me that bees are another creature that benefits from milkweed.

Sadly, born in 1948, I haven’t smelled a big patch of milkweed in my lifetime—and the chances have greatly diminished in recent decades.  I remember raising a Monarch butterfly caterpillar, around the late 1990s, and how hard it was to find enough milkweed to give the caterpillar its daily needs for milkweed leaves.

At least we’re still “in the clover”.   Borland confirms my observations recently that clover types grow at different heights:  The white clover on some lawns grows very low, thankfully; red clover grows fairly tall.

I read an article in a recent Columbus Dispatch newspaper article saying that white clover on lawns has gotten a bad rap over the years.  The writer likes it because it attracts bees, makes nitrogen fertilizer for lawns, and reminds her of her youthful days enjoying a rest on a clover-laden lawn.

We have white clover on our lawn—the only “weed” there I’m proud of—and I see red clover in the vacant lots along Ridgeland Drive and in the “wildflower oasis” at the far edge of the Clubhouse area meadow that fronts Apple Valley Drive.  But I don't know why it's called red clover when it looks very purple to me.

And I do relive my childhood when our toy poodle, Friendly, "forces" me to rest on our lawn with him!

Saving the Monarch Butterfly

You can start saving monarch butterflies by planting milkweed in your yard.  And, you can buy seedlings of common butterfly and butterfly weed (a compact milkweed) for $1 each at the Earth Day festival at Kenyon College on Sunday, April 6, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.   The seedlings will be sold at the Brown Family Environmental Center's booth at the festival, which will also have live monarch butterflies on display.

Populations of monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico have crashed this winter, reaching nearly rock bottom, after a long-term decline starting with the winter of 1997-1998.  The butterflies were not only a week late in arriving in Mexico last November, but their numbers were the lowest yet, 94 percent less than the record high in the winter of 1996-1997.

Heather Doherty, program manager of the Brown Center, describes the problem--and some solutions--in the Center's April newsletter, which is online at their website .
The easiest place to start, she says, are out lawns, where we can carve out some space for milkweed.

The Frontier of Ecology is in Our Yards, Not the Arctic

That reminds me of the theme of the annual conference of the Baltimore-Washington Partners for Forest Stewardship I attended in 2011:  The frontier of ecology is in your backyard.   conference theme at a conference I went to several years ago in Maryland:  The frontier of ecology is in our yards.  The point is that solutions to problems such as global warming and declines in species like the monarch butterfly lie in the backyards of cities and suburbs.  This is because it is in such developed areas that the causes arise, not in faraway places like the Arctic where the results show up most dramatically.

Monarch Butterflies in Critical Stage

The days of the annual migration of monarch butterflies to central Mexico may be numbered, according to a recent report cited in the March 2014 newsletter of the East Central Ohio Audubon Society.

Studies that began in 1993 showed that this winter the migration reached an all time low, part of a long-term trend.  The acreages of trees covered with monarchs was down to 1.65 acres this winter, from a high of 44.5 acres in 1995.

What can we do?  For one thing, we can plant monarch butterfly gardens--milkweed plants for the caterpillars to devour and nearby nectar plants for the adult butterflies to sip on--and pollinate.  That suggestion comes from "Monarch Watch" (http://www.monarchwatch.org).

The nonprofit organization sells milkweed seeds and plants as well as seeds of recommended nectar plants.  It also offers other ways to get involved, such as rearing monarch butterflies and tagging them on release.  And it sells kits for these activities as well.

There is also a program for monitoring caterpillars on milkweed plants in our neighborhoods, either on a weekly or incidental basis.