" The analysis
indicated milkweed and monarchs both started declining in the 1950s-well
before the advent of glyphosate."

This sounds about right to me.  It also correlates with when governments got aggressive at mowing ditches in the mid west.

Milk weed never did live in cropped land.  If you have ever tried to dig up a mature milk weed and replant it you will understand why as you watch it die.  It does not tolerate root disturbance very well.  I recall in about 1953 finding a small patch of four or five milk weed plants in a corn field. I could still take you back to within a couple of hundred feet of where they were growing.   I remember that patch of milkweed so clearly because you simply did not find it in fields.  You found it in fence rows and mainly in ditches along the road.  No farmer back then was doing anything about weeds in the fence rows.  In fact those were generally considered desirable as that is where most of the pheasants nested and where they sought cover in the fall during hunting season.

Dick

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