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Michiana Chronicles writers bring portraits of our life and times to the 88.1 WVPE airwaves every Friday at 7:45 am during Morning Edition and over the noon hour at 12:30 pm during Here and Now. Michiana Chronicles was first broadcast in October 2001. Contact the writers through their individual e-mails and thanks for listening!

Michiana Chronicles: Monarchs and milkweed

Ken Smith

We just wanted our flower beds to be more tempting for the butterflies, and we especially hoped those stained-glass dazzlers the Monarchs would flutter in. We read they were in trouble all across North America, the Monarchs. In some tiny way, improving our front yard habitat might help. And that meant taking an interest in Milkweed, since Monarchs and Milkweed have got a thing going on.

We heard that Milkweed won’t grow just anywhere. Go ahead, we were told, snatch some seeds out of the air any time a few cottony floaters wobble by. Tap them into the soil in a sunny spot in the yard. Just don’t count on anything springing up the first year, they said. But eventually a few stalks of Common Milkweed arose in front of our house, and we’ve planted two more kinds, because, you know, biodiversity. The first plants were four or five feet tall, with leaves the size of a person’s narrowed, flattened hand set opposite each other on the plant’s upright stem. The mass of small violet flowers was beautiful but understated, the way wild things often are. Once they approved of our place, the Milkweed seeded itself and popped up annually in spots here and there outside the front window.

In summer, occasionally I see a Monarch land on a plant, curl and touch the underside of the leaf with the rear tip of her body. She flies off, and now there’s an egg glued in place there. Easier to see well with a magnifying glass, the egg is football shaped, with ridges running end to end. In the sunlight it glows a waxy yellow-green and seems magnificently alive. In a few days a tiny larva chews its way out. I might or might not catch a glimpse of one of the striped caterpillar stages, when they’re chewing on leaves, molting and growing. The Milkweed can accommodate all that munching and still produce ample seeds for next year. I never spot the Monarch’s cocoon, tucked away somewhere in the garden, from which an adult, soft and wet-winged, emerges.

This winter the Milkweed has taken center stage. The leaves fell away, leaving a stalk with seed pods. Each big pod has a round end and a pointy tip, like one half of a surrealist painter’s mustache. The grayish pods do not immediately condescend to pop open. When they do, a mature brown seed sits at the center of each cottony wisp.

But even so, they do not all rush off on the first windy day. If they did, a big gust from the northwest, say, would send all the seeds in one direction and leave most of the landscape barren of seeds. Instead, with enough of a breeze on any given day, an opened seed pod releases a few seeds to ride off in whatever direction the wind is blowing at the moment. That’s brilliant, I thought when I first understood it. And the little puffballs don’t just fly well. If one happens to land on a stretch of pavement or a dry hard patch of ground, it will roll on until it comes to rest on a more promising spot. One day I saw a little flyer, agile as a butterfly, heading skyward on the opposite side of the house from where it had set out a minute or two before.

So, Monarchs, we know you’re in trouble, but you’ve hitched yourselves to a cunning plant partner. Maybe we humans will get our act together to protect this planet and give you a better chance. Until then, Milkweed will dispense seeds to all points of the compass, doing its best to be there wherever and whenever you arrive. Monarchs, as a movie hero once said, “Stay alive!”

Music: "Wrong Foot Forward" by Flook

Ken Smith writes about algebra, bikes, con artists, donuts, exercise, failure to exercise, grandparents, harmonica, introverts, jury duty, kings of long ago, Lipitor, meteors, night fishing, Olympic athletes, peace and quiet, rattlesnakes, silly sex education, Twitter, unpaid debts to our fellow human beings, the velocity of an unladen swallow, World War II, extroverts, Young People of Today, and the South Bend Zoo.