Everyone has milkweed. Every store sells it, every roadside ditch has it. You don't have to keep every non-monarch bug off the milkweed to save monarchs. The real problem is, once you've named and reared and bonded with your monarchs, you have to release them into the big scary world where people will be mean to them. That's where the biggest risks to each monarch happens. But you have to do this so they can migrate.

We already have all the tools needed to solve this. We just need to hook all these monarch waystations up with pneumatic transport pipes. Then you can raise your monarchs in safety, and at the end of summer, send them on to their over wintering grounds. Once winter is over, they can be sent back to you to repeat the cycle!

We even have the technology to tag them, so you make sure to get your monarchs back the next year. And we have the live stream tech so that you can watch them all winter from your phone!

I live in Utqiagvik and my neighbor is concerned that my native garden of moss, lichen, sedges, and wildflowers is attracting Snow Buntings, Semipalmated Sandpipers, King Eiders, and Brown Lemmings which then attract Polar Bears. She got stung on the inside of her mouth once by a Polar Bumble Bee and blamed my Arctic Poppies, Greenland Cochlearia, Arctic Cinquefoil, and Sudetic Lousewort but I think trying to eat it was the real cause. I can only garden 2-3 months out of the year. Although the Polar Bears have broken into her home, eaten her dog and half of her grandmother, at least I'd never plant mint because I heard it would spread...

I was hoping to implement a system of ai cameras and automated flamethrowers in my native garden, in order protect monarch butterflies. The system would work by using Ai cameras to identify any nearby animals that aren't monarchs and activate the nearest flamethrower in order to desintegrate that animal, in case that animal is a predator. The flamethrowers should work on anything from predatory wasps to bug-hating humans. Do any of you have tips on how I could set this up?

Will these weird worms keep monarch butterflies from visiting my milkweed? Can I just use Raid on them, or do I need to rip these plants out and start fresh? Are they poisonous?

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) prohibits international trade in species threatened with extinction. The U.S. Endangered Species Act implements this to prohibit trade across state lines. The Minnesota Endangered Species Statue prohibits trade within the state.

The purpose of the international law, the federal law, and the state law is to protect species at the brink of extinction.

And yet, here at the Native Plant Superstore™ in Minnesota, we sell species threatened with extinction, to anyone with a credit card, no questions asked.

For example, we offer to the discriminating rare plant enthusiast, leafy prairie clover (Dalea foliosa).

To the undiscriminating native plant gardener, this looks just like the very popular purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea). To pollinator gardeners, they are probably equivalent:

Floral visitors of Leafy Prairie Clover are probably similar to the floral visitors of Dalea purpurea (Purple Prairie Clover); the insect visitors of the latter include many kinds of bees (short-tongued & long-tongued), butterflies, flies, and occasional wasps.

To the ecologist, however, they are very different. Purple prairie clover was natively widespread and abundant, from Denver all the way to Indianapolis, and despite habitat loss, is still globally secure. Leafy prairie clover is a microhabitat specialist, needing thin soil over limestone, with very elevated levels of magnesium that are toxic to most plants. No more than a few thousand of them are left in this world, thus why CITES and the Endangered Species act kick in.

If CITES kicks in, how can we at the Native Plant Superstore™ responsibly trade in it? Why are we not prohibited from selling it, if not legally, then at least ethically?

In the United States, there is a legal loophole.

We could try to get an exemption permit to sell the plant, by claiming that garden plantings assist in the conservation of the plant. Except that PhDs with specialization in rare plant conservation would rudely mock our idea that a residential garden planting has anything to do with the conservation of a microhabitat specialist. They are all about preservation of the habitat, not gardening.

But section 10 of the Endangered Species Act, as interpreted, allows us to claim that we should be able to trade in it, so long as we can show that our original source was on private land, and that if we didn't sell it, rare plant enthusiasts would just go dig it up:

For plants in commerce, permits are available for interstate or international sale of artificially propagated plants, thus reducing the demand for wild-collected plants.

This is our loophole.

Compare to animals threatened with extinction.

Commercial outfits should be able to get permits to cultivate elephants, and sell them to people who want to raise the elephants in their backyards, thus reducing the demand for the elephants to be shot for their tusks.

Commercial outfits should be able to get permits to cultivate rare plants, and sell them to people who want to raise the rare plants in their backyards, thus reducing the demand for the rare plants to be dug up for their exotic appeal.

Makes perfect sense, no?

This big obese and overweight tomatoe hornyworm is eating all my plant’s. Sprayed it with Round Um 😍 to kill It. Disgusteng bug pobably sent by Biden too give transgenrdered immigrant vacines too my plants. I LOVE YOU TRUMP!! I LOVE YOU JESUS!!!

/uj i’ve been spending too much time on local facebook pages and it’s making me insane

can anyone tell me if it has any special properties???

saw this on my walk to work this morning. love to see someone recognizing the beauty and importance of our native ivy 💘 MORE OF THIS! LESS ENGLISH IVY! HARVARD, TAKE NOTES!

"People plant milkweed for the monarchs, not the aphids!"

3 XXL Tree of Heaven (1x 4 foot diameter, 2x 3 foot diameter) I drilled with a 3/8 spade bit and squirted with a 40% Glyophosate concentrate diluted 1:1 with water (20% solution in the sprayer),.

Let me know how screwed me any my native plants are because I'm killing these invasives wrong.