Applegater Summer 2016
Not too late to see Melissa Blue
butterfly and Ornate Tiger Moth
BY LINDA KAPPEN
Melissa Blue butterfly
The Melissa Blue (Plebejus Melissa)
is a butterfly of the Lycaenidae family. Its
wingspan is up to one and three-eighths
inches. The upper side or dorsal view of
the male is blue with a thin black line
around the border. The female dorsal
view is brown tinged with blue and
a border of orange on forewings and
hindwings.
The male Melissa Blue will patrol
larval host plants waiting for females.
The female will lay eggs on host plants
or other plant stems or twigs nearby, and
their eggs will overwinter. Ants tend to
the larvae as they grow, keeping them safe
from predators and stroking
the caterpillars until they
secrete a sweet sticky treat for
the ants. (See the spring 2014
Applegater for a story about
Silvery Blues butterflies and
their symbiotic relationship
with ants.)
The Melissa Blue can be
seen in flight from late April
to late September in southern
Oregon. They like to nectar
on many flowers, including
their host plants, which are
a variety of legumes such as
lotuses, lupines, and vetches.
Their habitats are open fields, prairies,
and disturbed areas.
The Melissa Blue is quite common,
and its range is throughout the west
from Canada to Baja California. The
photo of the Melissa Blue on this page
was taken on a 30-acre reserve owned
by Southern Oregon Land Conservancy
along Williams Creek in Williams,
Oregon, in May 2015. This male Melissa
was friendly to the camera as I followed
it from plant to plant on an open rocky
beach next to the creek.
Note: The Karner Blue butterfly
found in the eastern US is a subspecies
of the Melissa Blue butterfly. The Karner
Blue is imperiled due to its rarity and
other factors that make it vulnerable to
extinction throughout its range. This
species, described by famous novelist
and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov in
the 1940s, was classified endangered in
1992. In May 2000, the Karner Blue
was listed as locally extinct in Canada.
Conservation efforts have been underway
in the eastern US for a number of years.
Ornate Tiger Moth
The Ornate Tiger Moth (Grammia
Ornata) is of the moth family Erebidae.
When wings are open, the moth can be
about one and a quarter to one and a half
inches wide. The forewings have a netted
pattern with yellow and black. The hind
wings are yellow to orange with black
spots, the black mostly fusing together
on the wing margins (or edges).
The adult male is nocturnal and
will come to light. The female is heavily
bodied with a large abdomen and can be
Photo left: Melissa Blue butterfly found along Williams
Creek. Photo below: Ornate Tiger Moth found near the
Klamath River. Photos: Linda Kappen.
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found in the daylight sitting or slowly
fluttering about on the ground. The
adults can be seen in late spring to early
summer.
The larvae of the Ornate Tiger Moth
are generalist feeders and will feed on
foliage of many herbaceous plants in
the spring. The moth’s habitat is moist
to open forest, grasslands, and high
mountain meadows west of the Cascades.
The range of this species occurs west
of the Rocky Mountains in the Pacific
Northwest.
It is documented that this species in
the Pacific Northwest is larger in Oregon
than in other Pacific Northwest states.
The Ornate Tiger Moth in the photo
was found in the Klamath-Siskiyous
in California just over the border from
Oregon. Being so close, it really was
large. I found this particular moth in
April 2016 near the Klamath River on
a road running along a creek. The area
had many herbaceous plants. The moth
was sitting on the ground with closed
wing and looked very fresh. It was indeed
heavily bodied, able only to flutter its
wings and fly a few inches. I was able to
gently open the wings for a fuller view
and positive identification.
It was a good find and one of the
highlights of a fine spring day observing
butterflies and moths.
Linda Kappen
humbugkapps@hotmail.com
Linda earned a naturalist certification from
Siskiyou Field Institute and hosts two-day
butterfly courses there.
Cantrall Buckley Park butterfly project:
Bringing back the monarch
BY JANIS MOHR-TIPTON
Many locals who lived in the
Applegate Valley in the 1970s tell us
that monarch butterflies were around
every year from May into fall and that
lots of caterpillars and flittering adults
were seen around Ruch School and the
valley. Now, 40 years later, we see very
few. What happened?
Several year s ago, Tom
Landis, a forester with US Forest
Service (USFS) who retired after 30
years as a nursery specialist, moved
to the Rogue Valley. He saw very few
monarchs and thought that they were
not very common. After researching,
he learned that the western monarch
populations had crashed, so he used his
nursery training to propagate the food
they needed to see if they would return.
In spring 2014, he planted a patch of
milkweed for the caterpillars—milkweed
is their only food source—to test his “if
you plant it, they will come” theory. The
project worked. The butterflies came to
the milkweed patch the first year and laid
their eggs. The resulting caterpillars began
feasting on the milkweed and made their
chrysalises. Monarchs emerged to fly in
our skies again. (See article in Medford
Mail Tribune, September 22, 2014.)
Now, many individuals and groups
of people are helping to restore lost
habitat and creating way (feeding)
stations with native milkweed and nectar
plants throughout the migratory path of
the western monarch.
Research has shown that
monarchs have the genetic
coding to come to our area to find their
food. Milkweed has been considered a
noxious weed and is often sprayed or
mowed. If we want monarchs back, we
have to let our wild patches of milkweed
grow and also provide more native
plantings. Monarch eggs are laid on the
underside of the leaves of the milkweed;
the caterpillar attaches its chrysalis to the
milkweeds, too.
At Cantrall Buckley Park, a project is
in the planning stage to create a monarch
way station in the park that will help
support habitat and be an educational
tool to encourage others to join in the
effort to restore habitat throughout the
Applegate Valley. This project is a joint
effort of USFS, Applegate Valley Garden
Club, Applegate Elementary School
students, and Linda Kappen of Southern
Oregon Monarch Advocates (SOMA).
The migration of the monarch
is amazing, and the part we play in
habitat restoration is important for
their survival. Monarchs, which are
really a tropical butterfly, have several
generations of egg-to-adult life cycles
of six to ten weeks each in order to be
able to migrate from the edge of Canada
to southern California. A typical life
cycle of an egg is three to four days, a
larvae/caterpillar’s is two to four weeks,
a chrysalis’s is two to four weeks, and an
adult butterfly’s life-span is from two to
four weeks.
Monarch breeding activity in
Southern Oregon is from May into
late fall, when the butterflies migrate to
warmer locations. Monarchs are in our
area for the longest period of time. Also,
Over two years ago, owners of a property behind Ruch School saw milkweed growing in a
pasture that had been kept mowed and decided to let it grow.
Last summer they had lots of caterpillars and adults in the native milkweed.
Monarch photo: Erin Galbraith. Caterpillar photo: Jamie Lusch, Mail Tribune.
the fourth generation born in southern
Oregon is called the “Super Generation”
because its life cycle is the longest at
seven to nine months. Then they fly from
our region to southern California for
overwintering in a warmer climate, and
in the spring they lay their eggs to start
the migration cycle north again.
Timing is important, so this
fall—with the park setting as protection
for the monarch and with milkweed in
the ground, pollinator plants in place,
and a “puddling” area for moisture
and minerals—visit the park and see a
monarch way station in action.
Janis Mohr-Tipton
541-846-7501
Applegate Valley Garden Club
janismohrtipton48@frontier.com
For more information
•Ecoregional Planting Guides—
www.pollinator.org/guides.htm
•Facebook: Milkweeds for Monarch
Waystations and Monarch Butterflies
in the Pacific Northwest
•Local native milkweed plants: Applegate
School Milkweed Gardens —Linda
Kappen at 541-846-6280
•Local native milkweed and nectar
plants: Forest Farm—541-846-7269,
www.forestfarm.com; Goodwin Creek
Nursery—541-846-7357, www.
goodwincreekgardens.com; Shooting
Star Nursery—541-840-6453,
www.roguevalleynursery.com.
•Local native milkweed seed and plants:
Klamath-Siskiyou Seeds—
www.klamathsiskiyouseeds
•Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates—
http://somonarchs.org