Monarchs laying eggs on milkweed at midsummer
June 25, 2026
The common milkweed along the edges of White River State Park is in full leaf now, broad and upright, the stems thick with a white sap that bleeds if you snap one. This is peak summer in central Indiana, the longest days of the year, and the milkweed is doing exactly what monarchs need it to do: growing fast, producing new leaves, staying green and full of the compounds that make it both toxic and essential.A female monarch finding a milkweed patch does not land randomly. She walks the leaves with her forelegs, which carry chemoreceptors sensitive enough to detect the plant's chemistry through contact. She is tasting the leaf before she commits. If the plant is right, she curves her abdomen and deposits a single egg on the underside of a leaf, pale green and ridged, smaller than a pencil eraser. Then she moves on, usually to a different plant, sometimes to a different patch entirely. A single female may lay several hundred eggs over her breeding season, but she spreads them deliberately. One egg per leaf, rarely more. This matters because a caterpillar that hatches has only so much leaf within reach before it needs to move, and if eggs are clustered, caterpillars compete.The eggs hatch in three to five days, depending on temperature. The caterpillar that emerges eats its own eggshell first, then begins on the leaf. It feeds for roughly two weeks, molting through five distinct stages, each one larger and more boldly striped in yellow, black, and white. The milkweed's sap contains cardiac glycosides, compounds that are toxic to most vertebrates. The caterpillar does not detoxify them; it sequesters them, storing them in its own tissues. By the time it pupates, it is chemically defended, and the adult butterfly that emerges carries that protection forward. A bird that eats a monarch and gets sick will avoid the pattern afterward. The warning coloration is not decorative; it is the advertisement of something real.Common milkweed is doing more than feeding monarchs right now. Its flowers, dense pink-purple clusters that bloom just before midsummer, draw a wide range of insects. The brown-belted bumble bee works milkweed flowers regularly, and the western honey bee, an invasive species introduced from Europe, is often present in the same patches. Milkweed flowers have an unusual structure: the pollen is packaged in small paired sacs called pollinia, and an insect visiting the flower can accidentally slip a leg into a groove and pull the whole structure free, carrying it to the next plant. The mechanism is passive on the plant's part, but it is precise enough that pollination depends on insects of a certain size and strength. Small insects sometimes get trapped by it.The monarchs here are part of the eastern population, the one that overwinters in the mountains of central Mexico and moves north through the spring and into summer. The individuals laying eggs on Indianapolis milkweed now are likely two or three generations removed from the butterflies that left Mexico in spring. Each generation breeds and dies farther north, and it is the late-summer generation, not yet born, that will make the full return migration south. That generation will live for eight or nine months rather than the four to six weeks of a summer adult. What triggers the difference is not entirely settled, but shortening days and cooling temperatures in late summer are part of it.If you are near any patch of milkweed right now, it is worth looking at the undersides of the leaves. The eggs are small enough to miss at a glance, but they are there if the monarchs have found this patch. Look for the ridged oval, pale green against the leaf's surface. The plant itself smells faintly sweet where the sap has dried on a broken stem. Somewhere in the warm air above, if you watch long enough, a monarch may drift through, angling low over the vegetation, checking what the summer has left for it.
Northern catalpa draws summer insects
June 6, 2026
The air around the northern catalpa carries the weight of summer heat and the faint sweetness of its late-season blooms. These threatened trees stand scattered through Indianapolis's neighborhoods, their broad heart-shaped leaves casting wide pools of shade. If you are walking beneath one now, look up through the canopy for clusters of white flowers marked with purple and yellow spots, each bloom shaped like a small trumpet opening to the longest days of the year.The northern catalpa times its flowering to coincide with peak insect activity. While most trees finished blooming weeks ago, catalpa waits until deep summer when the breeding season reaches its height. Each flower cluster holds dozens of individual blooms, each one producing nectar accessible to insects with varying tongue lengths. The flowers open in sequence over several weeks, extending the feast through July's heat when other nectar sources have dried up or gone to seed.This timing draws the Eastern Eyed Click Beetle and dozens of other insects to the catalpa's crown. The click beetle, with its distinctive white eyespots on a black thorax, visits the flowers for nectar but also hunts smaller insects attracted to the same blooms. Catalpa flowers pull in everything from tiny sweat bees to large carpenter bees, from hover flies to butterflies. The tree becomes a temporary feeding station where predators and pollinators share the same branches. Beetles browse the flower clusters while bees work individual blooms just inches away. The catalpa's extended flowering period supports multiple generations of insects through the peak breeding season, when females need extra energy for egg production and males compete for territory.The relationship extends beyond the flowers. Catalpa leaves feed the larvae of the catalpa sphinx moth, which appears nowhere else in the ecosystem. Adult sphinx moths emerge in waves throughout summer, their thick bodies and rapid wingbeats making them important pollinators for evening-blooming plants. The tree's broad leaves also shelter jumping spiders like the Dimorphic Jumping Spider, which hunts the smaller insects that gather on the leaf surfaces. When catalpa pods form in late summer, they provide winter shelter for overwintering insects, extending the tree's support through the cold months.The white trumpet flowers catch the afternoon light filtering through the broad leaves above. Each bloom opens for just a few days before dropping its petals, but new ones continue opening in the cluster. Listen for the steady hum of wings around the flowers, the sound of summer's breeding season sustained by this threatened tree's perfectly timed abundance.
Eastern redbud pods harden in late spring
May 22, 2026
The air carries the green weight of full leaves at Virginia Fairbanks Art & Nature Park, where late May has settled into the steady work of growth. Eastern redbuds stand among the maples and oaks, their heart-shaped leaves now broad and darkening, no longer the tender yellow-green of early spring. The showy magenta flowers that lined their branches in March are gone, replaced by something quieter but no less purposeful.Flat brown pods hang in clusters from the redbud branches, each one the length of a thumb and narrow as a coin. These are the tree's next generation, packaged in papery cases that rustle when the wind moves through them. The pods developed from the flowers' ovaries, swelling through April as the tree poured resources into seed production. Now they hang like small leather purses, their surfaces beginning to harden and their edges starting to curl.Inside each pod, four to eight seeds lie flat against the walls, dark brown and kidney-shaped. The redbud has invested heavily in this moment. Unlike many trees that scatter thousands of tiny seeds, redbuds produce fewer, larger seeds with substantial food reserves. Each seed carries enough stored energy to send a taproot deep into the soil and unfurl its first pair of rounded leaves before it must begin photosynthesis. The pods protect this investment, their tough walls keeping moisture in and insects out while the seeds complete their development.The timing matters here in central Indiana. Redbuds flower early, before most other trees, when pollinators are scarce but eager. By late May, when the forest canopy has closed and competition for light intensifies, the redbud's work shifts from capture to release. The pods will continue hardening through summer, their walls becoming brittle and their seams weakening. Come autumn, they will split along their edges with small pops, spilling seeds onto the forest floor. Some seeds will germinate the following spring, but many will wait longer, lying dormant in the leaf litter until conditions align just right. This patience serves the species well. Redbud seedlings need gaps in the canopy to establish themselves, and those gaps appear unpredictably when storms topple larger trees or disease opens clearings.The Great Crested Flycatcher calls from somewhere in the canopy above, its voice cutting through the softer sounds of leaves moving against each other. If you are standing beneath a redbud now, run your fingers along one of the hanging pods. Feel how the surface has changed from the soft green of early development to something firmer, more decisive. The tree has made its commitment to the future, and these small brown packages carry it forward into seasons not yet arrived.
