We are currently closed while we propagate and grow plants for fall.
We’ll reopen on October 1 for the next planting season
Monarch Life Cycle
Monarchs go through complete metamorphosis, meaning they have four distinct life stages: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult. Under favorable conditions, it takes about one month for an egg to become an adult butterfly.
Eggs
A monarch egg is about the size of a pinhead. It is off white with ridges running top to bottom. The egg remains attached to the underside of a milkweed leaf, stem, or flower for three to five days depending on the temperature.
A healthy female will produce, on average, four hundred eggs in her lifetime. How many of those she successfully lays depends on how long she lives and the availability of milkweed to deposit them on.
Did You Know?
The time it takes for a monarch to develop from egg to adult depends largely on temperature. Under suitable conditions, warmer temperatures speed development while cooler temperatures slow it. However, temperatures that become too hot or too cold reduce survival and can slow or stop development altogether. This is why monarch development varies throughout the year and across different climates.
Female laying egg
Caterpillars
A tiny caterpillar (2/10th of an inch) about the size of a grain of rice emerges into the world. The tiny hatchling will eat its eggshell before starting on its host plant, the milkweed.
Caterpillars spend most of their time eating. In approximately 9-13 days, a single caterpillar will eat several hundred times its weight in foliage, growing 2000 percent of its size as a hatchling.
During the caterpillar stage, monarchs will only eat milkweed plants. Toxins in milkweed are stored in monarchs, making them distasteful to predators.
Caterpillars, like adult insects, have an exoskeleton. This hardened outer covering protects their internal organs and muscles but cannot expand as the caterpillar grows.
To continue growing, the caterpillar must shed its exoskeleton, a process called molting. Each stage between molts is called an instar and can be used to identify the caterpillar's age.
Did You Know?
As monarch caterpillars grow, they change how they feed. Tiny caterpillars feed on flowers, thread-like leaves, and tender new stems. Larger caterpillars move to thicker stems, where they chew through the stem before feeding to control the flow of sticky latex. Fifth instars even drink some of the latex, gaining additional protective cardenolides that help defend them from predators.
Chrysalis (Pupation)
After the fifth and final molt, the caterpillar transforms into a chrysalis or pupa. Often, but not always the caterpillar wanders away from the milkweed plant onto surrounding woody vegetation or other structures where it attaches itself in place with a silk pad.
You know the transformation has begun when the caterpillar hangs itself upside down in a J shape. It sheds its exoskeleton one last time to reveal a green casing that hardens into a protective shell.
For another 8-12 days, a magical transformation is occurring. Though it is not fully understood, we do know that the transformation is regulated by a series of hormonal changes that result in a complete cellular rearrangement of the caterpillar’s body, transforming it into an adult butterfly. Even with this cellular rearrangement, monarchs carry the protective chemicals they acquire as caterpillars from eating milkweed into adulthood as an adult butterfly.
Just before the adult emerges (known as eclosing), the chrysalis usually changes color and then breaks open. The butterfly crawls out and pumps their wings. Then within a few moments, the monarch takes its first flight.
Photo to right is caterpillar looking for safe place to pupate. Photo above is chrysalis
Did You Know?
Unlike a cocoon, which is spun from silk by some moths, a monarch chrysalis is the butterfly itself. The caterpillar sheds its skin one final time, revealing the chrysalis underneath.
Monarchs don't always pupate on milkweed. After leaving their host plant, they may attach to nearby vegetation, fences, walls, or other structures.
Adult
Non-breeding, fall migratory monarchs live up to nine months. Breeding monarchs typically survive two to six weeks as adults. Roughly half of their life is spent as a caterpillar and half as a butterfly.
Given this brief existence, the availability of nectar and milkweed plants at the right time is existential to monarch survival. As adult butterflies, monarchs feed on sugary flower nectar as a source of carbohydrate fuel, giving them the energy to keep flying during their long migration.
A newly eclosed butterfly. It will take time for it's wings to fully pump with blood for it to fly
Mating takes several hours, usually overnight. Spring and summer monarchs reproduce soon after emerging, while the fall migratory generation delays reproduction until after overwintering.
A monarch’s life begins
- and depends -
on a milkweed plant
Milkweed
Every monarch butterfly you've ever seen began life on a milkweed plant. Caterpillars do not drink nectar. Every ounce of energy they will use to transform into a butterfly comes from the milkweed they consume during this stage.
There are approximately 100 milkweed species native to North America, all classified together in the genus Asclepias. Rush Milkweed (Asclepias subulata) is the most common in the Coachella Valley. We also have Desert Milkweed (Asclepias erosa) and Whitestem Milkweed (Asclepias albicans). Both of the latter are locally native but less common.
Milkweed is the host plant for monarch caterpillars. This means that monarch caterpillars can only eat milkweed.
The massive feeding that monarchs do as caterpillars isn’t just about powering their larval growth. Caterpillars also need to eat for the butterflies they will become.