Wild Ones St Louis Chapter Monthly Gathering Highlights
11 Mar 2020
Brentwood Community Center
Attendance: 51 members and 19 guests.
Chapter President, Marsha Gebhardt opened the meeting and asked for a show of hands of those who attended the Partners for Native Landscaping Workshop the previous weekend. She mentioned that the keynote speaker, Doug Tallamy praised the St Louis partnerships in support of native plants. She thanked all members for their support and welcomed three new members.
Marsha then introduced our speaker, Tad Yankoski, Senior Entomologist at the Butterfly House. Tad began by explaining the importance of the Missouri Butterfly Monitoring Network which for the past four years has been submitting volunteer-collected data to a national database. Ann Earley and Bob Siemer (who have been Wild Ones members for 17 years) have volunteered with this Network since its inception.
Tad chose 15 butterfly and skipper species to highlight based on the likelihood of seeing them in our yards, describing the best ways to distinguish them from similar species and telling us what plants their caterpillars need to feed on.
We learned that some species, like the Cloudless Sulphur and the Common Buckeye, do not survive our winters as egg, caterpillar, chrysalis or adult. Populations from the south will move up here again the next summer. Tad’s well organized, informative presentation concluded with ample time for questions from the audience.
When asked about butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii), he told us that the nectar has very little nutrition; and of course, is not a host plant.
Regarding raising monarchs in our home, he said raising even a hundred butterflies has such a tiny effect on the total population that one’s efforts would be better spent providing habitat — plant native milkweeds and nectar plants.
Tad recommended the website Insects of Iowa as a great tool for butterfly identification. Also, the book Butterflies of Illinois: A Field Guide which was revised last year.
Tad also mentioned the efforts of one California man who revived the pipevine swallowtail in his backyard
Our new T-shirts (pistachio green with dark green Wild Ones logo) were available for $15.
Recorded by Penny Holtzmann in the absence of our Secretary, Ginny Johnson who is traveling.
this was a fine meeting, full of information and energy…thank you all!!