Hello! First post since 2015, time flies! Interesting thread, ty! Where I work now, we grow and sell asclepias seedlings. I was previously unaware of the disease monarch butterflies get if there are too many in an area that isn’t ‘clean’, and they emerge from the chrysalis deformed. I don’t remember where I read the info, but they highly suggested that people who were growing asclepias with evergreen leaves periodically chop the plants back so that the disease couldn’t as readily hang around and infect future butterflies. This is a problem in the south of course, where it doesn’t freeze or frost as much, but it is a tip to try and help people who would like to help out monarchs by growing feeder plants. I did see diseased monarchs at the previous greenhouses of a previous employer, but I don’t know the source of their infection. I’m not overly knowledgeable about monarchs or this disease, just felt it would be a good heads-up for people
|
Threaded Mode
