"Monarch Mentors" provides opportunities for nature enthusiasts to learn about: habitat restoration in order to re-establish healthy numbers of monarchs & pollinators and then to help educate the public to plant native milkweed species and nectar-rich plants. This seems the only way for the low monarch populations to return to previous healthy numbers.
Habitat. Habitat. Habitat.
Nectar Resources for Waystations
Full descriptions coming soon.
Importance of lipids to migrating monarchs
5 minute audio recording from Dr Chip Taylor on the monarch's life cycle dependence on lipids (converted from flower nectar) in the annual fall migration and spring re-migration; click here:
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/nectar_lipid_graph.html
Buddleja - Butterfly Bushes
In areas where sufficient quantities of native plants are not available for whatever reason (poor soil, priced too expensively, not locally available in the trade, etc) Buddleja could be what's standing between butterflies (and other pollinators) and starvation.
Expect a blog post about this soon.
Aster Family
The Aster Famly has many of the most important fall nectar sources for monarchs and other pollinators: Goldenrods, Joe Pye Weed, Ironweed, Boneset, Purple Asers, Daisies, thistles and hundreds more species ranging in many habitats all across the country.
More detailed info coming soon on this and other botanical families that are great in Waystation plantings.