Monarch on Joe-Pye weed
Danaus plexippus
Monarch · Upstate New York · 15 August 2025
A female Monarch on Joe-Pye weed in an Upstate New York meadow in mid-August, a favourite late-summer nectar source right when Monarchs are starting to stage for the migration south. Monarchs breed across the whole continent wherever milkweed grows, and an Upstate meadow in August is full of them.
No black scent spots on the hindwings, which makes this one a female; males carry a small dark patch on a vein that females lack. Joe Pye was a real person, a Mohican healer in colonial New England said to have used the plant against typhus.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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