How Native Plants Infuse Life and Energy Into the Ecosystem
Here are five seedlings that hope to become the blooming flowers that feed bees and butterflies. But also, and very importantly, their leaves feed caterpillars.
Pictured here are five humble plants that are getting their start in my Kentucky backyard garden. Most of them are swamp hibiscus, a.k.a., rose mallow or hibiscus moschuetos. And there is also a swamp milkweed here.
The swamp hibiscus may look like this, taken at the Alan K. Draught park in Louisville, in 2016.
Or this, taken at the University of Louisville Life Sciences building in 2016.
In any event, native hibiscus ranks high among plants that support caterpillars. In my county, hibiscus ranks 54th among the 310 plant groups that support caterpillars. Hibiscus ranks just below common violets and just above wild geraniums. It supports 26 species of caterpillars, including the spiny oak-slug moth, and the white-marked tussock moth.
This is important, because caterpillars infuse prodigious amounts of energy into the food web, by feeding birds and predatory insects. And then the caterpillars who survive become butterflies and moths.
Speaking of butterflies and moths, if my swamp milkweed thrives, it will look something like this
Milkweed supports the troubled monarch butterflies, whose numbers have fallen by over 90% in recent decades. Monarch butterflies famously migrate to Mexico in the winter from Canada and the U.S. The generation that migrates lives 9 months, while three additional generations per year live one month each. So that makes four generations per year.
In each case, the mother monarch lays her eggs on some species of milkweed.
In Kentucky, the three most prevalent milkweed species are swamp milkweed, pictured above, as well as common milkweed and butterfly weed.
Here is a monarch butterfly sucking nectar from a purple coneflower.
The adult butterfly can feed upon any number of blooming plants, but they lay their eggs exclusively on milkweed.
Most caterpillars feed exclusively upon specific groups of related plants (grouped by family or genus).
Monarch butterfly caterpillars feed exclusively on milkweed.
This is why it is vital to have our home landscapes planted with a variety of native plants, because it’s the native plants that feed the caterpillars, which feed much of the rest of the ecosystem.