Migrating monarchs are floating through Dallas now, on their way south. You see several at a time fluttering against fair-blue skies and above gardens in search of a nectar-rich flower. Seemingly without a care in the world.
In fact, without human help, many won't make it to their winter grounds.
If you have not thought to provide the right plants for monarchs before now, it's not too late. Pots of daisy-like asters are blooming at nurseries, as well as yellow
Mexican milkweed is a life-saver for monarchs, literally. (Lara Solt/Dallas Morning News)
daisy-like natives and adapted plants. You also should be able to find the most important butterfly plant of all, blooming Mexican milkweed (Asclepias curassavica), also called tropical milkweed in some stores.
It's a two-fer, providing edible leaves on which females lay eggs and flowers to sustain the adults on their long route. You don't even have to plant them in the ground. They survive just fine in pots, as long as you remember to water them occasionally. Depending on our winter lows, their leaves and stalks may stay green, allowing them to put on growth before nurseries tend to stock them in spring.