Transplanting Common Milkweed during a dry June
These vigorous plants demonstrate a desire to live, converting atmospheric carbon to soil carbon and death to life, with the help of bees and monarch butterflies.
I transplanted 5 common milkweeds 2 weeks ago. I thought I had killed them, judging by the dead stems. it has been a hot, dry June, and I assumed I had waited too long to transplant
However, look what is popping up! Live milkweed plants!
The roots still had energy and a desire to live!
Milkweed is the host plant for monarch butterflies, which means its leaves are good for the caterpillars, the larval form of butterflies. And their blooms provide abundant food for pollinators (bees and adult butterflies) when they bloom.
I’ve never seen so many bumble bees in one place as when I witnessed the insect visitors on my friend’s 5’ x 8’ patch of common milkweed.
Like many wildflowers, it blooms for a week or two and is ravaged by pollinators. And then the pollinators make their exit, letting the plant generate seeds.
Some wildflowers feed pollinators for months at a time. This would include purple coneflowers and brown-eyed Susan’s. Others peak out as pollinator food for a week or two. That’s why it’s important to have as much diversity of wildflowers as possible and as much quantity (i.e., acreage) of wildflowers as possible. No one plant can feed everything. It takes diversity. It takes a village of plants to feed a village of pollinators.
This is how we support pollinators. And this is how pollinators store carbon.
What?!?
Yes. Pollinators, like all living things, store carbon. All life forms are made largely of carbon. People think plants store carbon because plants do photosynthesis, taking carbon out of the air and using it to make lignin and cellulose and other plant tissues and fluids.
Okay … that’s true. But the plant needs pollinators. And pollinators need plants. When we plant the plants and allow them to grow, this allows the growth of myriad carbon based life forms, including plants, pollinators, beneficial fungi, beneficial insects, beneficial bacteria, protozoa and nematodes … the whole range of life forms that come together to make an ecosystem.
As long as such ecosystems are growing, converting death to life, they absorb carbon.
As long as such ecosystems are being degraded, converting life to death, they are emitting carbon.
We can absorb carbon by allowing and encouraging ecosystems to grow. And we will emit carbon by degrading ecosystems via deforestation, real estate development, destructive agriculture and so on.
I teach a course on these concepts. This Tuesday, July 2 at noon Eastern Time, we have a free webinar where you can get to know the instructor, the course content and the possibilities that could emerge if we focused on nurturing life on earth.
The name of the course is Healing Our Land & Our Climate.
The free webinar is this Tuesday at 12:00 pm.
The course is every Tuesday thereafter for 12 weeks at 12:00 pm or 7:00 pm (your choice).
Here is a link where you can learn more and reserve your spot.
https://bio4climate.org/course-offerings/healing-our-land-and-our-climate/
Hope to see you there!