2. Can be found in nearly all of North America from south of Hudson Bay through South America; absent from Alaska and Pacific Northwest Coast. Can also be found in the Hawaiian Islands and Australia.
3. Color: Bright, burnt-orange with black veins and black margins sprinkled with white dots.
4. Wing spread is 3.5 to 4 inches.
5. Life Cycle: Egg is a pale green, ribbed, and pitted. It is shaped like a lemon with a flat base. Caterpillar grows to about 2 inches, is off-white with black and yellow stripes. One pair of fine black filaments extend from the front and rear.
Chrysalis is pale jade-green, studded with glistening gold, plump, rounded, appears lidded, with lid opening along abdominal suture.
6. Host plants are milkweeds and dogbane.
7. Habitat: Anywhere that has milkweed, especially meadows, weedy fields and watercourses. Spends winters in the fir forests in Mexican mountains.
8. One of the best known butterflies, the Monarch is the only butterfly that annually migrates both north and south as birds do, on a regular basis. But no single individual makes the entire round-trip journey.
LIFE CYCLE OVERVIEW: The life cycle of a monarch butterly includes four stages: egg, caterpillar, pupa, and adult. Each egg is laid on a milkweed plant. In about three days, a caterpillar chews its way out of the egg and begins feeding on milkweed leaves. Each time the growing caterpilolar becomes too big for its skin, it sheds the skin (or molts) and grows a new one. In about 9 to 14 days, the caterpillar is full size. The caterpillar spins a button of silk on the underside of a leaf and molts one last time. It emerges as a pupa. A hard shell called a chrysalis forms arounf the pupa. After about ten motionless days, this hard shell cracks open and an adult butterfly emerges. In about two hours, the flier’s wings will be hardened, and it is ready to fly.