Tammy SonsFounder/CEO, TN Nursery · CEO TN Nursery

Rare caterpillars has landed on our milkweed!!! #caterpillar #perennials #nativeperennials

8 Sept 2025 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

2:05

In this YouTube segment, Bailey from TN Nursery showcases a thriving colony of monarch caterpillars on an older, undisturbed milkweed bed in Tennessee. He emphasizes that native milkweed species (butterfly, swamp, and regular milkweed) are the only plants on which monarchs will lay eggs and successfully develop, whereas modern hybrid milkweeds are inadequate. Bailey cites a dramatic 90% decline in monarch populations over the past five years and warns that extinction could occur within the next five years if trends continue. He links this decline to widespread mosquito‑control spraying, which not only harms mosquitoes but also devastates non‑target insects such as dragonflies and monarchs; a single drift of spray can wipe out an entire generation. The video serves as a testimonial that preserving native milkweed can rescue monarchs, and it concludes with a direct call‑to‑action encouraging viewers to purchase native milkweed from tianursery.net to help save the species.

Chapters

¡Hey, guys! It's Bailey with TN Nursery, and I want to show you our little monarch caterpillars that's landed on our milkweed. Now, this is our older bed of milkweed. We don't really dig out of it, and, uh, they have landed on it, the monarchs has, and laid their little eggs, and it's just full of monarch caterpillars. And this is just a testimony of showing how one native plant can save a whole generation of monarchs. Now they don't spray where we're at up here in, uh, Tennessee. You know, they spray for mosquitoes nearly everywhere now, but they don't spray up here, so they ain't really endangered where we're at. But the whole monarch population has declined 90% in the last 5 years, and they're expecting the next 5 years they'll be completely extinct. The only plant that they'll lay their eggs on and live off of is the milkweed. Butterfly milkweed and swamp milkweed and just regular milkweed. The hybrid milkweeds they're making nowadays just is not cutting it. They don't, they don't raise on it. So you need a native type of milkweed and you could save generations of butterflies. One drift of the new spray that they have to, you know, kill mosquitoes, one drift of it can kill a whole generation of monarchs. It's not only killing mosquitoes, it's killing dragonflies. Dragonflies are becoming extinct because of it, and monarch butterflies, you know, are going extinct. But this is just a testimony showing y'all how one little plant can save a rare species. And there, these caterpillars are everywhere. They've ate the far out of the leaves. They ain't hardly no leaves left on this milkweed. But shop now at tianursery.net and save the monarchs.