Gardeners are scrambling to help the threatened monarch butterfly by planting more milkweed, the insect's host plant. Drought, loss of habitat and pesticides have decimated stands of milkweed along ...

Humans have not been kind to animal migrations. Relentless hunting over a century ago ensured that we will never watch billions of passenger pigeons turn day to night as they pass overhead or hundreds ...

There’s only one host plant for a monarch butterfly—milkweed! Choose native varieties for your area such as common milkweed, butterfly weed, swamp milkweed and showy milkweed. Create a monarch haven ...

Oliver Hernandez, of Overland, Kansas, poses with a common milkweed plant in his front yard in 2020. A tiny, young monarch caterpillar and even tinier monarch eggs are visible on the underside of a ...

Tropical milkweed was added to Florida's invasive species list in June 2025. This non-native plant hosts a parasite that harms monarch and queen butterflies. Florida has 21 native milkweed species ...

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today protected the prostrate milkweed as endangered. Only 24 populations of the plant survive, in south Texas and northern Mexico, where ...

For most animals, the milkweed plant is far from appetizing: It contains nasty toxins called cardenolides that can make the creatures vomit and, should they ingest enough, cause their hearts to beat ...