Common Milkweed in Ontario

What it feeds

Common Milkweed is a host plant local wildlife depends on. These are the beings it brings back.

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  Monarch ButterflyEndangeredButterfly

  A Monarch can only raise its young on milkweed. No milkweed, no Monarchs. It's that simple, and that fixable.

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  Rusty-patched Bumble BeeEndangeredBee

  Once common across eastern North America, now almost gone. It feeds on wild bergamot and asters, flowers any yard can grow.

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  Gypsy Cuckoo Bumble BeeEndangeredBee

  The bees it relies on need these same native blooms. Plant for one, and you feed both.

• 
  Little Brown BatEndangeredBat

  Disease wiped out most of them. A single bat eats thousands of insects a night, the ones night-blooming natives raise.

• 
  Barn SwallowThreatenedBird

  A bird that once nested on every farm, now threatened. Native plants feed the flying insects it catches on the wing.

• 
  Chimney SwiftThreatenedBird

  It catches every meal on the wing. Native plants sustain the insects it lives on.

• 
  Common NighthawkThreatenedBird

  Its dusk call is going quiet. It hunts the night-flying moths that evening-primrose and milkweed raise.

• 
  Eastern Whip-poor-willThreatenedBird

  Named for its haunting call, now seldom heard. It depends on the large moths native plants raise.

Photos: Photo by Derek Ramsey, GFDL 1.2 · Photo by USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab, public domain · Photo by Ivar Leidus, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo by Marvin Moriarty/USFWS, public domain · Photo by Malene Thyssen, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Photo by Andrew C, CC BY 2.0 · Photo by Greg Schechter, CC BY 2.0 · Photo by Dominic Sherony, CC BY-SA 2.0