I seeded some thin leafed milkweed today. The package said it was the correct variety for Monarchs to eat and lay eggs on and it’s native to California
Asclepias Fascicaris is the species
Pics if/when it comes up. I would be stoked to have it get well established and devoured by monarchs.
Regarding Monarch Butterflies and Milkweed.
This year only 12,000 Western Monarchs were counted in their overwintering areas of coastal California, drastically down from the millions that were counted in the 1980's. Milkweed leaves (plants from the genus
Asclepias) are the only food the young caterpillars eat. Adult monarchs feed on nectar from flowering plants. (Source - The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation)
The overuse of the weedkiller glyphosate is one of the key drivers to this loss. Studies estimate that roughly 850 million to over 860 million milkweed plants or stems have vanished from Midwest and northern U.S. crop fields since the late 1990s and early 2000s, largely driven by the adoption of glyphosate-resistant genetically modified crops being sprayed with glyphosate. (
Source - Friends of the Earth )
With respect to glyphosate-resistant genetically modified crops, the USDA has approved a new kind of genetically engineered wheat called HB4 and it's
designed to tolerate glyphosate. General Mills Foods is one of our countries top producers of wheat-based foods. Currently, glyphosate is sprayed on
nearly half of all corn and soybean crops grown in the U.S. where it is used for weed control. In EU countries, glyphosate residues in food are strictly regulated and monitored. Maximum residue limits (MRLs) are set with large safety margins, typically far below levels that could affect human health.
(Sources - USDA and
EUFIC)
The US Forest Service - Dept. of Ag and the BLM have started spraying large quantities of glyphosate on public lands that were burned out
by forest fires in California and other states. Forest Service and BLM have stated in their use reports that the spraying of these large quantities of glyphosate are considered “practically non-toxic”. In 2023, in California 266,000 pounds of glyphosate were sprayed on forests, five times the amount sprayed
20 years ago. That makes forest spraying the fastest-growing market for glyphosate in the state.
(Sources - USFS / BLM, Science, Public Health Policy and the Law, and
Mother Jones )
