Watch "Monarch caterpillar explores tropical milkweed." on YouTube
After retiring on April 1st, I resumed biking every day but added some time consuming other activities - - gardening and raising monarch butterflies. The caterpillars came from Monarch Watch and are growing at a tremendous rate on tropical milkweed (Asclepias currasavica or blood flower). Luckily, some local milkweed has also sprouted, because it turns out that the older caterpillars are avoiding the leaves on the tropical milkweed and eating only the flowers - - something about regulating the amount of the milkweed toxin that they need to accumulate, I guess. They are happy to switch to Minnesota native milkweed though, so I think we should be able to get all of them to maturity without running out of food.
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