03/05/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1DUQgn7dNV/
Right now, in the mountains of central Mexico, monarchs are waking up.
They've been sleeping since November — clustered so thick the trees bend under their weight. This week they begin the journey north.
The butterfly that left your garden last September will never return.
She made it to Mexico. She survived the winter. But she won't make it back to your yard. Instead she'll fly north into Texas, find milkw**d, lay eggs, and her journey ends there.
Her children continue north. They live a few weeks. Lay eggs. The next generation pushes further. Then the next. It takes four generations to reach the northern states.
Then in late summer something changes.
The fourth generation is different. They don't reproduce. They live eight to nine months instead of weeks. They fly three thousand miles south to a forest in Mexico they've never seen. And they find the exact same trees their great-great-grandparents left.
No one fully understands how.
The migration isn't one journey. It's a relay race across a continent, written in genes. And it depends entirely on one plant being available at every stop along the way.
🦋 What makes the relay work:
- Milkw**d is the only plant monarch caterpillars can eat — no milkw**d at any stage of the relay means that generation fails and the chain breaks
- Plant native milkw**d species, not tropical milkw**d — tropical varieties don't die back in winter and can harbor parasites that build up in resident populations
- Common milkw**d, swamp milkw**d, and butterfly w**d are the best options for most of the US
- Even a few plants in a container on a porch gives a passing female a place to lay eggs
The first generation arrives in the southern US this month. They're looking for milkw**d. Everything that follows depends on finding it 🌿
