Tolerate the Uglies!!!

After carefully watching my larval plants for several months (which felt like years!), I'm finally seeing caterpillars on them. 

There are monarch caterpillars on the milkweed,

black swallowtail caterpillars on the parsley,

gulf fritillary caterpillars on the maypop vines,

and - based on the foliage - probably phaon crescent caterpillars on the fogfruit. 

YEAH!!! My plants are starting to get ugly!  They are making butterflies!!!

As much as I love seeing the caterpillars, though, I find that I do cringe at how ragged my plants start to look at this point of the summer.  Not only is the heat taking a toll, the plants are so large that any dry spells can cause wilting and brown edges, even partial leaf drop.  By the time the caterpillars show up and start eating the leaves, the plants can start looking like I should yank them out of the garden at the first possible moment.

Of course I don't pull them out.  I chose and planted these plants especially as butterfly food.  Why would I pull them out just as they are starting to actually produce butterflies?  Even if I do "mentally hear" my neighbors gossiping about how ragged my garden is looking these days.

Honestly, couldn't these plants be a little NEATER and PRETTIER while they go through this stage of their life cycle?!

My own phrase for this is "Tolerate the uglies!"  Benjamin Vogt of Monarch Gardens shares the same concept with his phrase of "Redefine pretty."  In a world saturated with television ads showing happy, beautiful people in manicured yards that don't have a single tattered leaf or brown spot in the lawn, it feels subversive to allow caterpillars to actually eat the leaves on your plants.  Seriously, shouldn't this be done behind closed doors, people?!

To be even more subversive, this summer I've noticed that my monarch caterpillars seemed to purposefully deflower the milkweed they are feeding upon. 

First, mama monarch laid quite a few eggs underneath flower bud clusters, so the caterpillars have been eating the flowers and buds from the moment they hatched.

Secondly, as the caterpillars reached one of their later, larger instars, I noticed that 3 of them had cut the stem of the entire flower cluster partway through, resulting in the entire bloom head hanging upside down and dying.  Seriously, what's up with that?!  The only thing I can figure out is that, evolutionarily, this decreases the chances of parasites being attracted to the plant for nectar and thereby finding the caterpillar(s) nearby to host their offspring on.  I've never heard of this as a "thing" before, though, so I don't know if my imagination is just running away with me - or if, maybe, I'm on to something.  Any monarch researchers out there that might want to look into this idea?

Along the same lines, is it coincidence that the eggs were laid shortly after the buds started opening and the plants started blooming?  Evolutionarily, could it be that so many eggs were laid on these newly opening flower buds to decrease the overall numbers of blooms, decreasing the seed production, and thus moving the plant energies into leaf production, thereby providing more food for more baby monarchs?

Or is this egg placement just a way to hide the caterpillars until they get a little bigger and less attractive to wasps and other caterpillar parasites who might not care that they don't taste good?  See how well that monarch caterpillar is hidden?

Can you see it now???

How about now?  Pretty safe hiding place, isn't it?

WHY the timing and placement for egg laying?  Coincidence or evolutionary plan?  Inquiring minds want to know.

While I contemplate these possibilities, I meander my garden enjoying the new life chomping hungrily on my plants and try not to cringe at the blooms being cut short and the leaves disappearing in the process.  Life is a balance - and never more so than in a garden.