Monarchs in New Zealand (No, the Queen is not visiting.)

It wasn't long after we arrived here that Jeanne and I were pleasantly surprised one day to see an old friend fluttering by. "It's a monarch," we said in unison, and had we been characters in a newspaper comic strip, the reader would also have seen a 'thought bubble' arising from each of us containing a large, bold-font question mark. Whether the question marks indicated our surprise at seeing this particular butterfly, or surprise at uttering exactly the same words at the same moment, would not be explained.  

"I didn't know there were monarchs in New Zealand," we again simultaneously wondered, and smiled as we acknowledged non-verbally that great minds really do think alike, and sometimes apparently, even speak alike. (the thought bubble question marks would be doubled in this second panel) 

This synchronised speaking, I thought fleetingly, can't possibly continue to yet another pair of identical statements and I was right. Jeanne and I returned then to voicing our very own unique sentences and have continued right up to the present day. We have often returned to the subject of monarch butterflies but have never returned to speaking duets again.  

The other day, the solution to the puzzle of how there came to be monarchs in NZ, was revealed to me in stages. 

As we arrived at Summerland Primary to pick up the boys after school one day, I noticed a little girl studying a plant intently. She was looking at a caterpillar that was crawling up a leaf. Realising that it looked very much like a monarch caterpillar, I wondered if the plant was somehow related to the milkweeds back home.  

Fortunately, just about then, Ian, the school groundskeeper came along.  He had been helpful to me in the past. The first time, when he told me about the one-of-a-kind plant Tecomanthe speciosa, and the second time when he provided a tall step ladder after school one day to retrieve Arram's glider air plane from the  top of one of the covered walkways.  

"Oh, that's a swan plant," he said, when I asked. "Monarch caterpillars eat them." 

Once I got home I found that the swan plant, and the giant swan plant, Gomphocarpus fruticosus and physocarpus respectively, had been brought to New Zealand in the late 1800's. Coincidentally, so had the monarch. I checked that story out in Te Ara, the Maori Encyclopedia, to see if it's reporting agreed with other sources. It did. 

I found too, that the swan plant is indeed related to our own milkweed at the family level and contains cardenolides, just like our milkweed does.  

Here are some photos I took that day.  

There is my little research assistant. she'll probably be a lepidopterist some day. The 'swan plant' is also called the balloon plant for obvious reasons. 

Jeanne has harvested some of the seeds from this plant and hopes to start some in our yard. The boys love monarchs so it would be great to have a (temporary) resident population at our house.  

This one we found along Harvest Drive. It's wings seemed broken or incomplete and after carrying it a while and studying it, these two young scientists left it in the grass again.  -djf