Collect & Spread Milkweed Seeds in the Fall for a Beautiful Garden
of Monarchs in the Spring!
April 7, 2007 - By Shawn Letraid, Emily Huber, Portia Young, and Janet Perry,
Frederick Banting Alternate Site, OCDSB, Stittsville, ON
With this year’s warm fall after the arrival of the winter solstice it is still not too late to collect milkweed pods and sprinkle the seeds in your garden to ensure that beautiful monarchs visit your garden to live and grow next summer.
On Monday October 2nd, my class arrived at our school Frederick Banting Alternate Site in Stittsville to find that the Monarch Caterpillar that we had been watching over for many weeks had finally emerged from her cocoon as a beautiful butterfly. We had been following the progress
in Janet Perry’s science class and for EarthCARE, a school initiative that helps students become stewards in protecting the health of our planet.
We named our monarch Emily after determining the sex. Male monarchs have what looks like a large black dot on each of the hind wings so we knew ours was female.
To prepare Emily for her journey to Mexico she needed to be fed nectar before being released. She would need much energy to travel that long distance for arrival in Mexico around November 1st and 2nd, “The Day of the Dead”. People in Mexico believe that monarchs are the spirits of
loved ones who have passed on.
We made her a solution of sugar and water, which was boiled and cooled before we fed it to her. After this we tagged Emily because Monarchs are an endangered species.
After making sure Emily was fed enough for the day we took Emily outside and released her, beginning her 4000 km journey to Mexico. En route Emily will have stopped to drink nectar from many nectar giving flowers such as bee balm, asters, and black-eyed susans. To ensure that the
great-great-great grand cocoons have food to live on after the spring monarch migration back to Stittsville we sprinkled milkweed seeds from the milkweed pods along the school fence. Milkweed seeds need the cold winter in order grow the next spring. Without the milkweed as a source
of food the ecosystem that supports the beautiful Monarch would collapse.
For more information on Monarchs visit www.monarchcanada.org.
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