Trees used by Monarch butterflies in California

[Anne Kilmer]

Artificial Christmas trees would be better, surely? You could use
elderly ones, municipal ones that had seen better days. And, between
them the seedlings of the natives (which natives) could be growing. What
they're looking for is instant trees.
Our melaleucas had a hell of a lot of help getting started. Seeds were
scattered from planes in good sites. 
Then they got more help when we decided to get rid of them. Best to just
leave them be, if you ask me. Let Nature figure it out. But planting
more seems to me a very bad idea. 
Maybe a few totem poles, just to carry out the theme. An ecumenical
appeal to Mother Nature. 
Thank God people havent' decided to "help" the sulphur butterflies. It
worries me when they get so much attention. 
Maybe if we released Cabbage Whites at weddings and funerals, they too
would grow scarce? ;-) That's a Winkie. :-) This is a smiley. 
I wish I were getting my weather news from someone who didn't want to
sell me plywood. 
Plenty of butterflies this morning; a zebra longwing was jousting with
the ceiling fan. I don't know which one started it ... 
Now it's cloudy,  a brisk wind blowing. I'm looking at lawn furniture
and wondering ... the zebra has sufficient wind to amuse it outside ...
it just swept by, wind-surfing. 
Gulf fritillaries are flying, giant swallowtails, a skipper or two and a
small yellow moth I haven't met before. It transmogrified into a bit of
dried grass as I watched it. I am not going to take up the study of
moths. But I wished him well. 
Looks pretty good for us ... not so good for the Gulf. But, with
hurricanes, anything can happen. 
Cheers
Anne

Doug Yanega wrote:
> 
> Mark Walker wrote:
> 
> >How much of a problem is this species when it comes to propagating itself?
> >I have no data, but it sure seems like the trees stay pretty much where they
> >were originally planted.
> >
> >I don't mean to argue in favor of planting exotics.  I'm just curious.
> 
> I don't think they spread without help well at all - but that's not so much
> the objection here as the idea that one is *replacing* and *excluding*
> native vegetation and animals when one plants eucalypts (there are several
> species used). That 100-year-old grove likely has maybe one other plant
> species in it, few insects, few or no vertebrates, etc. Eucalypts are
> famous for that sort of sterilization, here in Brazil, too. If you want to
> sterilize an area, why not just put up a bunch of concrete totem poles
> instead? Ecologically speaking, there wouldn't be much difference, except
> that grass could grow between totem poles... ;-) (Smilie for the
> humor-impaired)
> 
> Doug Yanega    Depto. de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas,
> Univ. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Cx.P. 486, 30.161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG   BRAZIL
> phone: 31-499-2579, fax: 31-499-2567  (from U.S., prefix 011-55)
>                   http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
>   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82