The Long Hill Garden Club of Trumbull, Connecticut

Founded and Federated in 1941

2008 - 2009

A Monarch Butterfly begins life as a tiny dot-a very round yellow tiny egg found on the underside of a new young milkweed leaf. After he hatches as a tiny almost transparant caterpillar he eats--growing and gaining 300 times his birth weight, for approximately 2 weeks. Then he will encase himself in a crysalis and emerge in 10 days as a beautiful butterfly.

The Monarch Butterfly goes through a process called metamorphosis, wherein a much despised caterpillar emerges as a much beloved butterfly.

 

The caterpillar goes to a high point and creates a button of silk from which it hangs in a "J" shape.	Then, it gets covered by this pale green 'skin', wriggling as it grows up his body. At the same time, this black stuff grows at the top. It looks like he sheds his caterpillar skin as the green skin covers him. He discards the black skin.
This is the discarded 'catterpillar skin'.	The chysalis ocassionally wriggles and the smoothness of the skin grows upward for the next hour.
This is how it looked for the next 10 days, until it turned very dark and translucent.	We discovered it looked like this early one morning, after about 10 days and 3 hours later it emerged from this chrysalis as a butterfly.
	You can see the body is quite puffed up and larger than we normally see it, and the wings are considerably shorter than expected.

 

For the next hour the butterfly seems to pump up his wings and then beats them as thought drying them. The day they emerged ( we had 2 chrysalis in our acquarium) it was grey and rainy so we placed some budlia blooms in with them and released them the next day that was very sunny.

 

 

You, too, can do this and experience the wonder of this metamorphosis. You must have a common milkweed source. And it is there that you will find eggs. Cut the stem with the leaf that has the egg on it and place the stem in some water. Then place the container and the stem in a covered container. I used a small acquarium covered with screening. This is to keep the egg safe from spiders and birds that eat the eggs or the caterpillar when it hatches. I kept the acquarium on my porch out of direct sunlight. After the egg hatches keep the food source fresh and as the caterpillar grows it will need to have the cage cleaned. Placing a paper towel in the bottom of the container makes this task easier. Refresh the water and the milkweed as it is needed. It is an easy task but a remarkable experience to watch this process.