{"id":4243,"date":"2025-08-02T14:16:40","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T18:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/?p=4243"},"modified":"2025-08-03T10:57:59","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T14:57:59","slug":"a-monarch-visits-a-primrose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/a-monarch-visits-a-primrose\/","title":{"rendered":"A Monarch visits a Primrose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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One day, at the end of July 2025, I noticed a Monarch butterfly flitting around the native plants that Toronto Nature Stewards have planted at TNS Leaside Park. Eventually, it settled on an Evening Primrose plant. I managed to take a photograph, and then I began to think how long it had taken to get to the stage where a native plant had grown so large that it was was creating habitat for the butterfly.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The story of the Monarch and the Evening Primrose began way back in October 2023. I was walking in the Moore Park Ravine and I noticed the mature seed heads of some Evening Primrose plants. I broke off a couple of the seed heads, put them in a paper bag upside down, and shook them from time to time as I continued my walk. By the time I returned home I had a collection of small dark seeds that I poured into a small envelope, whicj I then labelled and stored in a dry cool place.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In late November I planted the seeds in four inch pots and sealed them in a wooden box in my garden until early spring, when I unsealed the box and let sunlight get to the seeds. They germinated and I soon had a collection of small Evening Primrose plants.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In May 2024, TNS volunteers planted out the Evening Primrose rosettes, along with many other native plants.<\/p>\n\n\n

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By mid-July 2024 the evening primrose first year rosettes were well established. As the plant is a biennial, it does not bloom in the first year. The whole growing season is devoted to establishing a good root system to allow for rapid growth in the second year.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Now, in July 2025, the Evening Primroses have grown to five feet in height, standing out in front of the sunflowers that were planted at the same time. They are growing only 3 kms away from where I collected the seeds, so they are truly local native plants. In a few more months they will create seed pods, so I can collect more seeds and start the whole process over again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One day, at the end of July 2025, I noticed a Monarch butterfly flitting around the native plants that Toronto Nature Stewards have planted at TNS Leaside Park. Eventually, it settled on an Evening Primrose plant. I managed to take …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,387],"tags":[459,461,391,458,462,460],"class_list":["post-4243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nature","category-tns","tag-butterfly","tag-evening-tns","tag-leaside","tag-monarch","tag-native","tag-primrose"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/JwithEP.jpg?fit=1488%2C1488&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5VvjI-16r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4273,"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions\/4273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oyston.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}