Have you heard about Honeyvine?
Spring is here, and as always, she brought with her a juicy explosion of green growth and alluring blooms. The leaves are unfurling, the bees are drunk on fresh nectar, and the birds are twittering up a storm.
This feeling of abundance and promise is powerful and inspiring, but it quickly can turn into overwhelm at the prospect of lawn care. The growing season is a weekly–if not daily–battle of beating the lawn into submission, and we all have succumbed, at times, to the societal pressure to maintain a perfectly smooth, uninterrupted turf of lush, green grass around our homes.
But achieving that HOA-approved lawn is not cheap OR easy, requiring weekly mowing and trimming, fertilizers to promote growth, insecticides to kill root-eating grubs, and herbicides to kill broadleaf “weeds”. Broadleaf plants are a turf grass lover’s sworn enemy, INCLUDING milkweeds, the host plant for Monarch Butterflies. In the fight to save these miraculous creatures from extinction, we are facing a fundamental choice.
We must decide what we truly value: turf grass or broadleaf plants? An orderly landscape or butterflies? Happy neighbors or HOA citations? Insect collapse or flowers? At the Pilgrim Center for Connection, we choose flowers. We choose butterflies. We Choose Love. And this year, we are inviting you to join us!
Choose Love: Choose Laeve
One summer day 8 years ago, I had an eye-opening experience. In the midst of my hectic life as a working mother of four, I stepped out the back door of my house to find weeds growing. Frustrated that I had let them take over, I reached down and began to angrily yank them out. As I grasped them, though, I felt something soft and giving. I had a handful of caterpillars!
I knew enough then to recognize that they might be Monarchs, but I also knew that they only eat milkweed, so I didn’t understand why they were on this darn “honeysuckle” vine I had to keep pulling out! I had always seen it growing as a weed, in every yard we had, on the edge of the woods, in the bushes, etc., since I was a child. Blooms in tiny white clusters, smells delightful, makes fluffy seed pods. Wait a minute.
That pesky weed was really a broadleaf blessing, Honeyvine Milkweed (Cynachum laeve). And now I had Monarch caterpillars but no milkweed! Where could I even find more?? Thus began a frantic, neighborhood-wide search for more Honeyvine, but there wasn't much. We were able to find it only in the "neglected" yards that no one sprayed or mowed.
We found enough for those particular caterpillars, but we realized first-hand what experts were shouting from Monarch Watch and Save Our Monarchs: decades of noxious weed ordinances vilifying milkweeds, as well as the proliferation of suburban HOA lawn aesthetics, have created a serious problem. And without more milkweed plants, we will lose the Monarch Butterflies.
Despite global recognition of this issue, whenever I share what I’ve learned about Honeyvine milkweed, I find it malingered and maligned in nearly every forum. I even find people in MY gardens in MY yards pulling it out WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.
These often are well-meaning folks who have some gardening education or experience. They may be planting a milkweed variety in their yard already, with intentions to support the Monarchs! And like many, they may also see their milkweed plants struggle or even die out. They find the Honeyvine milkweed uninvited in their grass and flowerbeds, over and over, every year, and they are frustrated by its tenacity and persistence.
They have no idea that they are pulling a monarch host plant. In fact, they believe it to be a fast-growing, aggressive, vining plant that will overcome and pull down their other, intentional garden plants. This feeling is understandable when we recognize the societal pressure to maintain turf grass and its preferred near neighbor, tidily mulched flower beds full of short bedding plants that bloom all year.
After years of observation, however, we feel it is more likely that Honeyvine is being confused with one or more of at least four other aggressive vining species common in this area: Climbing False Buckwheat (Fallopia scandens), Sweet Clematis (Clematis terniflora), Field Bindweed, (Convolvulus arvensis) and Morning Glory (Ipomoea spp.)
What if we are right? What if Honeyvine could be invited into and allowed to remain in our yards? What if, in the spirit of Doug Tallamy’s Homegrown National Park movement, we stopped spraying 40 million acres of turf grass with broadleaf herbicides? Yes, it’s 40 million acres! That’s no drop in the bucket; that is life or death for pollinators.
How much more habitat could we create for our Monarch Butterflies and all pollinators? How many more people could experience the joy of watching Monarch caterpillars feed and thrive and metamorphose into those regal butterflies? How much more stewardship of our green spaces could be fostered and grown? How many more people would Choose Love if they only knew it would make a real difference?!
Calling all Citizen Scientists!
These are questions worth answering. But first, we're going to need to gather some data, and we’re going to need YOUR help!
And here's how easy it is: you don't have to start any seeds, you don't have to plant any plants, you don't have to pull any weeds, you don't have to have a garden, you don't even have to water a potted plant!
Just take walks, in your yard and in your neighborhood. Notice the plants that are coming up around you. The best part about Honeyvine is that this native LOVES to grow in our area. In fact, it lives in many of our yards and green spaces already, even if we've never planted or noticed it.
Here are some pictures of what it can look like at various stages of growth. It has heart-shaped leaves, likes to climb, blooms with clusters of small white flowers, and forms smooth seed pods that mature to release flat brown seeds with fluffy white tails that catch the breeze for easy dispersal.
Your assignment: help us locate Honeyvine plants so we can track their growth habits. Visit us at one of our events to grab a FREE, weatherproof Choose Love: Milkweed Growing Here sign (or just snag the image below and make your own!). Then get outside to discover this vine already growing in your yard or green common areas (school gardens, parks, etc). Place your sign and post your location with a photograph to Facebook or Instagram and tag us at @pilgrimcenterkc
We’ll confirm your plant identification and map your site. Then we encourage you to visit your Honeyvine several times over the season, and share photographs with us. As we are able on public and private sites, we will visit to monitor it over the next three growing seasons.
We’ll note details like, when do the vines first emerge in spring? How long do they get? Do they grow rapidly, spread vigorously, pull down other plants? When does it first bloom? How many seed pods form? We’ll also document observations of any Monarch butterflies and their eggs, larvae, chrysalises, etc.
Don't forget to have a conversation with landowners before placing signs. This can be an opportunity to encourage them to provide an area of their lawn or garden that supports pollinators with flowering plants or a water source.
Want to see what festivals we are visiting this spring? Click here.
Need a Honeyvine sign but can’t make it to a gathering? Fill out this form, and we’ll get you a sign.
Want to volunteer to help us on our monthly data-gathering visits? Fill out this form and we'll reach out. (coming soon)
Want us to come talk to your student group or visit our gardens to talk about pollinator support? Fill out this form. (coming soon)
We will gladly accept data submitted from anywhere in the United States, but we can only visit sites to collect information in the Kansas City area.
Please call, text, or email Amelia McDaniel at (816) 753-6719 or amelia@pilgrimcenterinc.org with any questions