I didn’t purposely plant swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) beside my air conditioner, but it decided to show up there this year anyway. And I’ve relished having it so close to the sunroom windows, where I can easily watch the innumerable insects that come to feed and breed on it daily. In most cases, I welcome “volunteer” native plants wherever they appear in my garden, but this particular plant is in jeopardy. Why? The air conditioner guy is coming to do maintenance on the unit in a couple days, and this plant is growing right up against it. Normally this service would be done much earlier in the summer, but I procrastinated about making the appointment and couldn’t get on their calendar until this week. And as you see in the photo below, the little pathway of stepping stones I’ve laid for his convenience has been overtaken by an exuberant display of partridge pea and swamp milkweed. Partridge pea is another plant that moves around my garden a lot each year. I never know exactly where it’s going to come up, but that just makes me like it more. Since I may have to cut this plant down for the service guy to gain access, I decided to spend some extra time admiring it in its final days. Therefore it’s time for another installation of my Micro Nature Study Series, in which I show you all the insect activity I can find on a single plant in a short period of time.

On this windy and rainy day I didn’t set a particular time limit, but just stood beside the plant and started shooting as quickly as I could focus on the fast-moving bugs. And it was decidedly busy, with bees and wasps buzzing past my head as I held my macro lens about six to eight inches from the flowers. Within ten minutes I’d shot everything I’m showing you in this post.

Since I titled this post, “Swamp Milkweed: Not Just for Monarchs,” I’d better start off with the monarch photo, right? By now most people have learned about the importance of milkweed to the life cycle of the threatened monarch butterfly. But I’m going to show you how useful it is to many other insects as well.

Among the critters who come to feed and breed on milkweed are bees, wasps, beetles, ants, flies, and spiders. This very hairy leafcutter bee seems almost cuddly.

And here’s one of the wasps, drinking nectar from tiny flower after tiny flower.

These next two wasps tend to steal the show because of their relatively large size among the other insects. The great golden digger wasp measures about one inch, whereas the great black digger wasp tops that at 1.4″; you couldn’t ignore them if you tried! There’s a video at the end of this post to give you a better idea of what it’s like to watch them.

If you look closely at this next photo of the great black digger wasp you’ll notice the pouches of pollen dangling from its legs. Milkweed produces pollen in waxy sacs called pollinia, and they’re tucked down inside the flower in a way that only the largest and strongest insects can manage to pull their legs out when they accidentally slip down inside. When the leg comes out, the pollinia are attached to it. Pollination requires that the same insect’s leg slips down inside another milkweed flower to dislodge the pollinia. It sure seems like an unlikely series of events, but it obviously happens enough. Sometimes you’ll find a smaller bee with a leg stuck inside the flower, and that might be the last day of its life if it can’t get that leg out. If you want to read more about milkweed pollination, the USDA has this nice resource.

I’m happy to have another excuse to show you my beloved red milkweed beetles; this pair is trying to make more of the same.

And I don’t always get a final identification on everyone I find, as in this picture of a little bug and an even tinier white spider. That’s one thing I’ve learned from my study of insects, to be more accepting of uncertainty. Even when I can determine the name of something, there are so many insects that scientists haven’t studied enough yet, and information about their lives is hard to come by as I try to research them.

I didn’t get good photos of everyone, but in only ten minutes I saw a dozen species of arthropods on this single swamp milkweed plant: 1 beetle, 1 true bug, 1 spider, 1 butterfly, 3 wasps, 2 bees, 2 flies, and 1 species of ants (maybe more, they move fast and I rarely try to photograph ants). If it hadn’t been so windy I would have stayed longer and most likely documented more species. These Micro Nature Study sessions are a wonderful way to pay attention to the diversity of species in the garden. Maybe you should try it in yours and let me know what you find!

I’ll leave you with a short video of one of the great golden digger wasps crawling around on the flower umbel, flicking its wings. I’ve read various theories about why wasps flick their wings, and most of them revolve around the idea of either getting attention from a potential mate or a possible threat, or as a way to regulate their body temperature on hot days. I encourage you to watch this 30-second video at full screen width. If you have your volume turned on you can hear my wind chime tinkling in the breeze and American goldfinches singing as they fly their ‘roller coaster’ flights across the garden. Watch the compound leaves of partridge pea swaying gently behind the milkweed and notice yourself taking a nice deep breath. A scene like this is very calming for me.

Addendum: Oh, by the way, I’m hoping I won’t have to cut this milkweed down for the service guy. I’ll try cutting him a new path by removing the ferns and some hostas that are hidden in the first photo. And then I’ll politely ask him to step over the stem of this plant. I’m also worried that he’ll be bothered by all the bees and wasps so close to his work space, so if he’s concerned about them I suppose I will have to cut it. But if so, I still have plenty of other milkweed in the garden, so it’s not a tragedy either way. I just like to be dramatic, as you know. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did!