Common Names
Milkweed ,
Botanical Name
Asclepias syriaca, A. cornuti
Flowers:Dull, pale greenish purple pink, or brownish pink, borne on pedicels, in many flowered, broad umÂbels. Calyx inferior, 5-parted; corolla deeply 5-cleft, the segments turned backward. Above them an erect, 5-parted crown, each part called a hood, containing a nectary, and with a tooth on either side, and an incurved horn projecting from within. Behind the crown the short, stout stamens, united by their filaments in a tube, are inserted on the corolla. Broad anthers united around a thick column of pistils terminating in a large, sticky, 5-angled disk. The anther sacs tipped with a winged membrane; a waxy, pear-shaped pollen-mass in each sac connected with the stigma in pairs or fours by a dark gland, and suspended by a stalk like a pair of saddle-bags.
Stem:Stout, leafy, usually unbranched, 3 to 5 ft. high, juice milky.
Roots: deep, fleshy, conic root
Leaves: Opposite, oblong, entire-edged smooth above, hairy below, 4 to 9 in. long.
Fruit: 2 thick, warty pods, usually only one filled with compressed seeds attached to tufts of silky, white, fluffy hairs.
Preferred Habitat:Fields and waste places, roadsides
Flowering Season:June - September
Distribution:New Brunswick, far westward and southward to North Carolina and Kansas.
After the orchids, no flowers show greater executive ability, none have adopted more ingenious methods of compelling insects to work for them than the milkweeds. Wonderfully have they perfected their mechanism in every part until no member of the family even attempts to fertilize itself; hence their triumphal, vigorous march around the earth, the tribe numbering more than nineteen hundred species located chiefly in those tropical and warm temperate regions that teem with the insects whose cooperation they seek. Commonest of all with us is this rank weed, which possesses the dignity of a rubber plant. Much more attractive to human eyes, at least, than the dull, pale, brownish-pink umbels of flowers are its exquisite silky seed-tufts. But not so with insects. Knowing that the slightly fragrant blossoms are rich in nectar, bees, wasps, flies, beetles, and butterflies come to feast.
One cannot stay long around a patch of milkweeds without seeing the monarch butterfly (Anosia plexippus), that splendid, bright, reddish-brown winged fellow, the border and veins broadly black, with two rows of white spot on the outer borders and two rows of pale spots acros the tip of the fore wings. There is a black scent pouch on the hind wings. The caterpillar, which is bright yellow or greenish yellow, banded with shining black, is furnished with black fleshy 'horns' fore and aft." Like the dandelion, thistle, and other triumphant struggles for survival, the milkweed sends its offspring adrift on the winds to found fresh colonies afar. Among the comparatively few butterfly flowers - although, of course, other insects not adapted to them an visitors-is the Purple Milkweed (A. purpurasceus) whose deep magenta umbels are so conspicuous through the summer months. Humming birds occasionally seek it, too. From eastern Massachusetts to Virginia, and westward to the Mississippi, or beyond, it is to be found in dry fields, woods, and thickets. Netje Blanchan Wild Flowers worth Knowing(1917
Answered by rita tauro
at
10:48 AM on January 31, 2009
