Seasonal Essay for September

In September tufts of white fly across fields and roads, liberated from the swollen pods where they developed. Milkweed seeds, like the clouds of aspen seeds we see in June, are being carried to new fields in the eternal struggle for survival and expansion of range. The milkweed flower which forms the seeds is a complex structure, so formed that insects seeking food there find their legs trapped in crevices. In extricating them, they tear free small packets of pollen which they then carry to other milkweed plants where fertilization occurs. Occasionally one sees a dead insect hanging in the flower, trapped too tightly to escape.

Also in September, Monarch butterflies begin their long flight southward. Their lives and that of milkweed plants are closely intertwined. As is true of many plants, milkweeeds contain a substance which is poisonous to some kinds of insects, but Monarch caterpillars are able to detoxify it and to feed on milkweed leaves. And it is within a silvery case attached to these milkweed plants that the caterpillar transforms into the adult we know so well. One fall, finding one of these cases, I picked the leaf it was fastened to and took it on a visit to a grandson, telling him to watch carefully for the emergence. Sure enough, a day or so later he called out, "Come quickly, it's happening!" And there it was, the slow emergence, the expansion of wings and their drying out. Then we bid it goodbye as it left to begin its long journey.