This is a photo of what I thought surely must have been some type of tropical plant growing from one of our fir trees. It was so fragrant and wonderful. I set out to do a full search to find it's name. I found nothing. I went to take another photo to show some folks and I found this awesome caterpillar. I then abandoned my search for the plant and focused on the caterpillar. Well my search for the identification of the caterpillar led me to the i.d. of my wonderful plant. Much to my dismay it ended up being a milk weed plant. Yes, my exotic plant was a weed. But not just any weed, it is the only plant that the monarch butterflies eat and lay their eggs on. My caterpillar would soon become a lovely butterfly! Upon learning my plant was really a weed, my initial reaction would have been to pull it, even though I had originally thought it to be wonderful. Don't let other's prejudices change your way of looking at things. You can find inspiration in anything, even a common weed, if you just take the time to look.
2 comments:
I was just wishing the other day that I had a milkweed "plant" so that I too would have monarch caterpillars hanging about. Cool post!!
I dug some of the wild plants up just to attract monarch butterflies....ok, I'm regretting it now! If you do that, make sure you don't put it in with all your other plants....they are cool caterpillars, aren't they?
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