The Incredible Journey

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Once your garden is established you will have provided several generations of Monarch butterflies a safe and desirable home. Your reward is the hundreds of eggs that were laid carefully on your milkweed by hopeful female monarch butterflies. The two or three caterpillars that survive to adulthood in September play an historic role in the lifecycle of Monarchs. The earlier four generation of Monarchs were programmed to mate, lay eggs and perpetuate the species. Each butterfly inherited the DNA gene to fly to Mexico (east of the Rockies) but did not. Only the Fall generation of Monarch butterfly doesn't mate until the next Spring but flies south and then southwest to central Mexico's mountainous region to overwinter.