by Gretchen Lytle
Introduction
In early August I found time to return to Montgomery Place. My plan was to explore the west meadows, the descending space between the mansion and the river. Following trails mowed through the meadows, I looked closely for insects around and on the plants. The colors of blossoming wildflowers and cultivated flowers caught my eye—and attracted insects as well. My main concern was whether monarch butterflies would be plentiful. Populations change from year to year. Why aren’t the birds eating the monarchs? It turns out birds learn early on that those colorful butterflies have a bitter taste—because as caterpillars they spent their time eating milkweed, which has a toxic substance that birds dislike.
The West Meadows Over Time
Over the past several centuries, the relationship of the west meadows to both the natural world and to humans has evolved. The first people to live on that land were the Munsee and Muhheaconneok (People of The Waters That Are Never Still); they fished, hunted, foraged, and grew crops in the area.
When Europeans settled the area, they transformed the land by building permanent structures and developing farms and orchards. In the early 1700s, Barent van Benthuysen held a land patent that included land that Janet Livingston Montgomery purchased in 1802 to create Montgomery Place. Livestock grazed on the west lawn, and farmers cultivated hay there. Midway through the nineteenth century, when the farm moved inland to where it is today near River Road, the area to the west of the mansion came to serve new purposes. It offered beautiful, fresh river views as well as trails for walking.
During the early to mid-twentieth century the Delafields further refined that space between the house and the river. They re-graded the west lawn and planted trees, developed Violetta White’s west terrace perennial garden, and they also dug a pond for recreation—skating in the winter and fishing in warmer seasons. A hundred years later, the west lawn continues to offer magnificent views and trails for people—and it also provides food and shelter for pollinators. From spring into early fall, it is an active part of the pathway along which butterflies travel and lay eggs. One of the most eye-catching is the monarch butterfly.
A Pollinator Pathway
When walking the trails around Montgomery Place from spring into early fall, one is likely to see butterflies—and, if you’re lucky, they will include monarchs. How is this possible when monarchs live such relatively short lives? The monarchs we come across at Montgomery Place are in fact the great-grandchildren or great-great-grandchildren of those monarchs who wintered over in northern Mexico just last November–March. The west meadows suit them well. These younger generations sip nectar from the wildflowers as well as the cultivated flowers. They lay their eggs on milkweed plants. Bard is part of Pollinator Pathway, an organization that promotes public and private pesticide-free corridors of native plants that provide nutrition and habitat for pollinating insects and birds.
Adult Monarchs
Monarchs go through complete metamorphosis in their lives. They’re easiest to spot in their eye-catching adult/butterfly stage. I found this beauty enjoying the hydrangea nectar at Montgomery Place. Males and females are orange and black, distinguishable from each other by the male’s black spot on a vein on each hind wing. Their ultimate job is to mate and produce offspring. The summer adult monarchs mate when they are 3–8 days old, remaining together for many hours, from one afternoon until the next morning. Over the 2–3 matings during their 2–5 weeks as adults, the females lay 200-500 eggs. The female deposits and glues each egg singly, usually on the underside of a top leaf of a milkweed plant. Hard work, from my point of view.
Eggs and Caterpillars
The off-white eggs are tiny—pinhead in size—and are hard to spot. I look closely while walking the west meadows, eyeballing milkweed plants, but I am seldom successful. The little white dots I see could be who-knows-whose egg. A monarch larva will hatch in 3–5 days, crawling out onto its sole food source, the milkweed plant. For this larval stage, the caterpillars are essentially eating machines. During the ensuing 9–14 days, a larva goes through 5 instars/periods, during which it sheds its too-tight skin to move on to the next instar. At first, the caterpillar is a pale green or grayish-white, almost translucent. Over the following days, it develops a greener tone and some darker stripes. The stripes develop into dark brown/black, yellow, and white and become more vivid as the caterpillar develops more distinct body parts and grows to around the length of one’s end thumb joint, 2000 times the mass with which it started out.
The Chrysalis
In the third or pupal stage, the chrysalis forms. The monarch caterpillar crawls away from its host milkweed to a new one and suspends itself by a silk thread, hanging in a J shape, and then develops a bright green, hard exoskeleton, not a silk cocoon. Here is a photograph of the chrysalis I found on the edge of the northwest path three years ago in early September. Isn’t it amazing?
Full Circle
Eight to fifteen days later the transformation is complete, and the adult butterfly emerges, pumps fluid to expand its wings, and spends several hours drying—before it takes off in search of nectar and a mate. To come across a chrysalis and then watch the adult emerge is an astounding experience.
More Butterflies
Whether or not you come across a monarch when you walk the meadows at Montgomery Place, you will undoubtedly find other pollinators taking advantage of the available flowering plants. For sure, there are swallowtails and black swallowtails. Take your camera/phone with you so you can carry these images with you as we move beyond the fall season and into winter—looking forward to next spring’s renewal.
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