We hear a lot about milkweed and in fact many of my friends who cultivate

monarch butterflies talk about it a lot. You might even say that they're obsessed with it and for good reason.

But what is that reason?

What is the big deal about milkweed?

Let's talk about it. Every species of butterfly has a specific type of

plant that they prefer to reproduce on and continue that life cycle. A lot of butterflies have a group of plants that they will

accept as that host plant, but monarchs are really weird because they only use

milk weeds. The reason why is they have that

milky latex sap but it's good for monarchs. For us it's not so great it's toxic but monarch caterpillars eat that and the

reason they eat that is because then they themselves become toxic to things

that would eat them.

Really interesting little trick of Mother Nature there, right?

So, milkweed is a protective shield for the monarchs.

It's the reason why they seem to choose that one.

It's so interesting and it is a fantastic and relatively easy plant to grow, so I do encourage you to do it.

Now what you should do is you should figure out the milkweed that's native to your region

because that's going to be the one that your native pollinators and butterflies will be attracted to.

For me, I use narrowleaf milkweed because that seems to be the one that's native to where I am in San Diego but there are a lot of different ones

common milkweed poke milkweed purple milkweed white milkweed antelope

horns milkweed really interesting ones.

The thing about it is that latex sap,

which some plants have, you don't want on you.

...