Magician, Magellan, Methuselah
By Dale Goodner | 2nd October 2007
Suddenly there it was. Right where I would never have expected it. On a window frame by the kitchen, like a little piece of jade jewelry, a chrysalis had mysteriously appeared, just hanging there, out of place, on the side of our house. Appropriately it was positioned below a model of a monarch butterfly, which sits just above that very window, inside the house.
It was September. By mid month, the chrysalis opened and the adult monarch butterfly emerged, stretched out its striking orange and black developing wings, clung to the chrysalis case, and sat there patiently for almost two days, the weather being cool at that time. It tolerated my forays in and out the adjacent door, wings slowly opening and closing.
Finally it flew. Around the front of the house, my wife, Mary, has propagated myriad flowers, which thankfully have long since replaced the old monotonous lawn desert. There the monarch, along with countless other insects, fed on flowers for a couple of days before departing.
What was remarkable to me was that the caterpillar had undoubtedly fed on the foliage of milkweed in our front yard, had then crawled all the way around the house, climbed across the deck, up the window frame, and pupated right next to the window. And then returned as a completely changed flying adult to the front yard.
This tiny insect is busy right now performing an even greater magic feat: it is winging its way south to over-winter, in the location where its great great grandparents had been the previous year. Obviously it has neither map nor mentor. Navigation has to somehow be programmed into its genes. Here is true biological magic.
For an animal this small, this is indeed a Magellanic voyage (even though it’s not the first such voyage for a monarch). Fueled by sugars obtained from fall flowers, it crosses the entire United States under its own power. If we were to embark on a similar and proportional voyage, it would be several trips around the planet. Its bright orange color announces to the world that it is a monarch. This is crucial to survival. Because it spends its ‘larva-hood’ feeding on milkweed, it takes on sugar based chemicals called cardenolide aglycones, which make the butterfly bitter tasting and toxic. For this reason predators have learned to avoid this impressive white spotted orange and black, non-treat.
The normal life span of the adult monarch is less than two months. In order to accomplish this immense fall migration and over-wintering, the butterfly performs yet another very special trick. The generation, which is born at the end of summer, is a special delayed-reproductive phase, called diapause. This generation can live to be over seven months old.
It would be like a human living to almost 600 years old. Our butterfly was indeed a Methuselah in the making.
It is this generation that over-winters in the south, travels north several hundred miles in spring, and finally then lays eggs. Two or three generations later they will be back in our yard or somewhere in the northern U.S. or southern Canada getting ready for the return trip the following autumn.
If we’d had a typically tedious and tended lawn, there would have been no magic, or Megellanic journey to contemplate, and certainly no long lived insect Methuselah flitting around the yard preparing for southern climes.
You can easily make your yard more interesting. Fall is a perfect time to start the process of adding a little magic. Start by replacing that boring biological desert of turf with perennials, shrubs, trees, and even a few bulbs.
Native plants are greatly preferable. They know how to deal with the nuances, the vagaries of Illinois’ weather, and are less prone to pest problems. Native insects and birds have lived with the native flora since time immemorial and hence will find that your yard will look and feel like home.
A really easy first step is saving the leaves this fall. Don’t throw them out. Rake them up around the trees’ trunks forming a 10 to 20 foot diameter donut shaped pile with the tree standing in the hole. Keep a gap between the leaves and the tree’s bark. This leaf pile should be a couple feet deep. I’d water it down with a hose so the leaves mat down and resist blowing away.
In no time the leaves will flatten out and by spring will be a mulch bed, having killed the grass and weeds below. To promote more rapid leaf deterioration, use the mower to chop them up and blow them around the tree.
Why mulch? It rids your trees of the root toxins produced by turf grass, keeps the soil cool, conserves moisture, eliminates competition of turf for moisture and nutrients, stimulates tree root growth, and provides a perfect place to plant perennials. Don’t place annuals under a tree, since the digging constantly disturbs tree roots.
The rewards are many. The yard becomes a magical place with color and life. Our yard, as I write this has countless varieties of butterflies, bees, spiders, and beetles. The wrens nested in our front yard again this summer. Pest control isn’t an issue. With diversity, your yard develops what Rachel Carson called “resistance of the environment.”
With all the diverse predators there is little chance for any particular critter to take over and become a pest.
A simple walk around the yard becomes an exploration, with new discoveries at every turn. We’ve had preying mantis living among our plants, funnel spiders, orb weavers, humming birds, and, of course, monarch butterflies, to name a few.
Global warming is presenting new and unknown ecological challenges. One thing is certain, a diverse landscape is fundamental to adaptation, particularly as conditions change. While we can demonstrate this in our own yards, it is also vital that our rural landscapes contain diversity. With extinction rates at unprecedented levels, ecological restoration has never been more important.
This also includes our rural communities and family farms. Heirloom varieties of plants and animals have a resilience that is becoming more valuable. Unsustainable corporate farms are not the answer. Distant share holders care little for crop rotation, or fallow fields, or valuable hedge row habitats, or erosion control. Family farmers are better land stewards. After all, they seek to pass on a viable operation to their children and grandchildren.
Given our recent track record, this implies another sort of Magellanic voyage, to an entirely different philosophy, characterized by humility. One in which “my” yard becomes “our” yard, taking in to account all the other critters who live here. By extension this also needs to incorporate the land in general. We simply must stop producing rare and endangered species. By taking our place as one of many critters, and consuming and polluting less, we may be able to create a sustainable culture. Only in this way can our species become a “Methusela” among other species. If this doesn’t happen there’s a pretty good chance we will disappear before we ever really take wing.