Narrow-Leaf Milkweed

 My native milkweed is Narrow-leaf milkweed.  A paper bag of seeds (actually pods of fluff) were given to me years ago, and is why I even built a Butterfly Garden.  It's fairly invasive, and I pull little ones out all spring and summer.  They haven't enticed a single Monarch butterfly to visit.  I do not get many butterflies at all, and the only Monarch ever seen was last week, as one flew across my driveway on its way west. Still, I let them grow.  They volunteer fine, but they are also perennials.  

Each individual flower is quite pretty.

I take off some of the pods so I don't get too many plants.

 The dried pods split open and the "fairies," as we used to call any of these floating seeds, fly off. 

This beauty is a Small Milkweed bug, Lygaeus kalmii.  Their larvae eat the seeds, so now is the time I see more of them than usual.  I have recently learned the are more beneficial than harmful (see next paragraph). 

You know how some butterflies, Monarchs for instance, taste nasty (to birds and other predators, I don't know that from experience!) as a protection?  Well, that's because their larvae eat milkweed seeds, which contain a chemical that is then stored in the larva's body.  The chemical stays through an insect's metamorphosis into the adult.  This chemical makes other animals gag, vomit, or even die.  Milkweed bugs are the same.  As adults they move on and eat other things, including dead insects, nectar, and insect eggs.  

So, while they do eat milkweed seeds, that is considered a good thing, unless you are a milkweed farmer, as it helps control the invasiveness of the plant.  

I still don't like true bugs, although I do admire their beautiful patterns and colors, but now I'll stop picking off (and mashing) milkweed bugs!   That's a win win.  A win for them, obviously.  Also for me, as they see me coming, and run, or actually move to the other side of a stem.  I felt guilty killing even an insect that seemed so intelligent!   That guilt doesn't extend to squash bugs though. 

By the way, while butterflies metamorphic change is just the caterpillar to a chrysalis and hatched into the adult (as amazing as that is), milkweed bugs have five incomplete stages called "instars."   This photo is from 2020 and shows milkweed bugs in different stages of development.