#milkweeds

[indigrassy]

Milked for pollen

[rattyexplores]

Beautiful button orchid growing on a palm tree.

17/01/24 - Dischidia nummularia

QLD:WET - Cairns

[jell-o101]

I’m gonna become a menace to my local government and plant milkweeds all over my town so that the Monarch Butterflies come back from the brink of extinction >:(

[tiredwishes]

my beloved reverse stockholm-syndrome-esque carcar wip that may never see the light of day so here's a snippet i guess

[notasiren-iswear]

I like eating milkweeds.

- @abbiepillar

I hope for the safety of your stomach you mean cooked milkweeds.

[arinewman7]

Milkweeds

Fidelia Bridges

1876

[farmobileo3]

Tropical Milkweed.

[hqcreations]

Native Northeast Plants: Milkweeds

There are many varieties of milkweed, but in the northeast, there are five species of native milkweed.

I had the pleasure of getting to know three of the five beauties shown in the photos here, but one of which is a cultivar.

From the top we have the swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata followed by its vanilla white cultivar called ‘Ice Ballet’.

The pom-pomish one is the classic common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca.

And lastly the clementine orange Asclepias tuberosa.

All excellent hosts for the monarch and many other caterpillars and insects. While different insects love the nectar of milkweed, the monarch caterpillars evolved to exclusively feed on milkweed to build up the cardenolides toxin in its body to deter predation from birds.

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NOTE: This plant might not be exclusively native to the Northeast of the United States and could be native in a wider range of locations. I live in zone 6 area in the Northeast of the US so that is the lens of my focus.