Save Monarchs: Cut Black Swallow-wort
July 6, 9:00 am to noon
Meet at the Trailside Museum, north parking lot.
How you can help save monarch butterflies? You can help control the invasive weed, black swallow wort!
Sign up to cut back swallow-wort at the top of Great Blue!
When you remove black swallow-wort from the Blue Hills forests, you help make sure that the small monarch caterpillars (larvae) survive.
Monarchs need to lay their eggs on milkweed because larvae feed on the milkweed when they leave the egg. Milkweed is in the same family as black swallow-wort, and monarchs confuse the plants and will lay their eggs on this invasive weed instead of milkweed. Black swallow-wort, however, is deadly for young monarch caterpillars. Black swallow-wort is toxic to other species as well and often chokes out the native plants that wildlife depend upon.
I hate black swallow-wort (aka black dog strangling vine). I have spoken with a director of horticulture and several botanists from Toronto Canada on how to best maintain this horribly invasive weed without the use of herbicides. If interested, I would love to share what I learned.