Along their migratory routes, monarch butterflies stay nights in certain trees. The "butterfly trees," as they are called, are carefully chosen-- although the criteria exercised in their selection are not known. Species is unimportant, obviously, for at one stopover the roosting tree may be a eucalyptus, at another a cedar or an elm. But, and this is what is interesting, they are always the same trees. Year after year, whether moving south or returning north, monarchs will paper with their myriad wings at twilight a single tree that has served as a monarch motel a thousand times before.
Memory? If so, it is genetic. For you see, the butterflies who journey south are not the ones who come back.
- Tom Robbins, from Another Roadside Attraction
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