Illinois now has a law on the books that promotes the milkweed plant, in order to protect the monarch butterfly.

At last year’s plant sale by the conservation group Grand Prairie Friends, nearly 1,400 milkweed seedlings were sold. Why all the milkweed?  It’s the only genus of plants on which the caterpillars of monarch butterflies feed and develop. Knowing that monarch populations are in trouble, people here and across the country are doing what they can to create monarch havens in their own back yards.