Monarch Print
Monarch Print
Size
12 × 18 in overall, unframed. The plate sits on an ivory sheet with a border of about an inch, so it fits a standard ready-made frame of the same size, with or without a mat.
Printed on 189 g/m² (10.3 mil) enhanced matte paper.
Want it ready to hang? The same plate comes framed in Black or Red Oak.
Adults, caterpillar and chrysalis on milkweed, the plant it cannot live without.
The print
- The full plate with its name, legend and credits, re-rendered from the source scan at print size, not enlarged from a shirt file.
- Restored from a library scan of the original book; nothing redrawn.
- Keep out of direct sunlight; a frame with glass or acrylic keeps it clean.
Shipping & production
Each print is printed for you after you order, usually within 2–5 business days, and ships on its own (separate from any shirts or framed prints in the same order). Shipping is shown at checkout before you pay.
Returns
If your print arrives damaged or misprinted, contact us within 30 days of delivery with a photo and we'll send a replacement or a refund. Because every print is made to order, we can't accept returns for a change of mind.
Plate 029
From the book
- Species
- Danaus plexippus
- As named in the book
- Papilio Archippus.
- Artist
- John Abbot
- Book
- The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia, 1797
Then and now
Its eastern population migrates up to 3,000 miles to winter in the mountains of central Mexico.
Field notes
One generation a year flies thousands of miles to a forest none of them has seen.
Abbot painted the monarch with its whole life on the page: two adults, the banded caterpillar, the jade chrysalis with its row of gold dots, all on a stem of milkweed. The milkweed is the key. Caterpillars eat nothing else, and they store the plant's bitter heart-poisons, cardenolides, in their own bodies. The adult's orange and black is a warning label.
Most monarchs live a few weeks. But the generation born at the end of summer is different: shortening days hold off their breeding and stretch their lives to eight or nine months. That "super generation" flies from the eastern US and Canada to a few mountain forests of oyamel fir in central Mexico, places none of them has seen, and winters there in clusters that bend the branches.
In spring they start back north, and their great-grandchildren finish the journey.