MILKWEED POD, REVEALED

Ever since my daughter was in kindergarten, we have been following the monarch butterfly. Her English teacher had ordered chrysalises, and the class watched the metamorphosis from gold beaded green cocoons into an orange, black and white butterfly. I learned that the males have two black dots on the lower wings that the females don't. I learned that the butterflies migrate thousands of miles across North America (for a great version of this migration, watch the Imax 3D movie, Flight of the Butterflies, if you can find it, or at least read the great story of Dr. Urquhart's quest to understand, beginning at the University of Toronto). I learned that they look for milkweed to lay their eggs, which is decreasingly prevalent with pesticides and mowing. I found pockets of milkweed growing locally, and I dutifully looked for a single egg underneath a leaf, laid with the hope that the tiger striped caterpillar will be protected from predators due to their poisonous skin. We have one lone milkweed, but are looking to increase that in our garden next year, and I have been waiting for the pods to dry to have some seeds to plant for next year. There were so many pods though, that we opened one up. Indeed, breaking the pod off resulted in a sticky milky liquid, thus, presumably, how the plant was named. The pod came apart stacked neatly like a pinecone with a peak of silk. We brought it home, laid it on a plate, and the seeds slowly detached, and the silk became a spherical parachute like a dandelion head, but on each seed. By the morning, our cat was chasing them and eating them, and I herded them up as best I could and my daughter let them go outside, where hopefully next year's crop of milkweed might grown in our side garden! Spread the love!

Milkweed bundled up inside a pod, part corn silk, part pinecone.