Ohio milkweed pod collection planned

VW independent/submitted information

The Ohio Pollinator Habitat Initiative is calling on Ohioans for a second year of milkweed pod collections.This project started in 2015 as a seven-county pilot and, last year, hundreds of Ohioans worked together. Since then, volunteers have collected approximately 5,000 gallons of common milkweed seed pods, totaling over 22 million seeds.

Milkweed is the only host plant for the monarch butterfly for egg laying and caterpillar rearing. It also serves as a food source for monarchs, as well as many other pollinator species.

The disappearance of milkweed across the U.S. has contributed to the 80 percent decline of the eastern monarch butterfly population over the last 20 years. The Pollinator Habitat Initiative is working hard to change this, and area residents can help.

The initiative is hoping to make collection efforts in 2018 even better by following the following simple tips:

• Make sure that before seeds are collected, participants become familiar with the common milkweed to avoid harvesting pods from similar plants, such as hemp dogbane and swamp milkweed
• It is best to collect pods when they are dry, gray, or brown.
• If the center seam pops with gentle pressure, they can be harvested.
• Store the pods in paper bags; plastic bags collect unwanted moisture.
• Put the date and county collected on bags when they are turned in.
• Keep the pods in a cool, dry area until they can be delivered to the Van Wert SWCD’s pod collection bin, located outside the door at 1185 Professional Drive in Van Wert.

Collections start September 1 and run through October 30.

For more information regarding milkweed collection, contact Marci Lininger at Marci.Lininger@dot.ohio.gov or Lori Stevenson at Lori_Stevenson@fws.gov.

For more information on milkweed, refer to the following video: http://u.osu.edu/beelab/milkweed-seed/.