Date: 03/10/2015

Number: 1

I'm in Houston and my Tropical Milkweed never died out. (I have red and yellow varieties) I should have cut them back last year because the plants are really tall and lanky with leaves mostly on the top 4 or 5 inches. But at least I still have leaves and I see more leaves emerging. I've seen a couple Monarchs flying around the yard in the last month or two, and I've seen a couple crystalis in the yard or on the house. I had at least 6 fat cats in my Milkweed about a month ago. Not sure if they all survived.

Last year around early April I walked outside to find no less than 50 caterpillars in my relatively small Milkweed patch! They had eaten all the milkweed down to the stems. Some were knawing on stems and some had taken off across the yard in search of food. They looked like they were scrambling wildly looking for food. I've never seen caterpillars move that fast. I went out and bought about 20 more plants to get them through that season.

I brought a lot of the cats and chrystalis inside since it got down below freezing again, and I managed to release 35 or 40 butterflies after the freezes were over.
I'm looking forward to more caterpillars this year. If I have as many cats this year as last year, at least I have a second big Tropical Milkweed patch planted and ready to go. :-) And I'll be planting more native milkweed seed varieties in the garden this spring.

Houston, TX

Latitude: 29.8 Longitude: -95.4

Observed by: Bett
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