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Asclepias curassavica |
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| | The species has red-and-yellow bicolor flowers |
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| | 'Silky Gold' |
A tender member of the milkweed family. We'd grown these years ago, but had fallen back upon their hardier cousins until this year. Spurred in part by their colorful flowers, and in part by their superior attractiveness to monarch butterflies, I decided to give them another try. I think they'll turn into a staple of our annual garden - not only are the flowers even nicer than I remembered, they successfully attracted a monarch mommy - we found their caterpillars by early August. The one pictured here is a little one, not nearly ready to pupate.
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| | Late October - most of the flowers have gone to banana-shaped seed pods, but a few keep on providing their cheerful color well into fall |
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In our garden, this plant grows in the following areas: Max's garden, , , back yard island Seed for this plant is included on my seed trade list About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Asclepias curassavica
Visitors to this page have left the following comments| Susan | Feb 01, 2009 | Hello :)
Wow! Love your site so far! I'll be planting 4 of these in our gardens this year. I am amazed by your not having a single aphid (not that I can see) on your plant. I had to hose them off everyday...and in the process I hosed off Monarch Cats and drowned the nearby plants...Good Grief! This year I'm going to plant some 'Moonshine' Yarrow nearby to hoefully attract some lady bugs...and Alliums to help deter some of the aphids.
With my luck, I'll wind up confusing all the bugs and the lady Monarchs won't even lay their eggs...LOL
I get aphids too on my milkweeds - but I'm not a tidy gardener, so I tend to let them be. Our garden should have a healthy population of good bugs, but not enough to knock bigger infestations of aphids out. |
| J. Imhoff | May 01, 2009 | Hi, Rob, Love your site and I'm always referring to it for details on your plants and butterflies. Thanks for all the info!
Now I'm wondering how long it took your A. curassavica to get to 'garden size' for the monarchs. I just started seed yesterday, and I'm wondering if it will be usable for the butterflies by the time they arrive in July/August.
Thanks. Judy
I start mine around mid-March, so you're about 6 weeks behind. But I think your plants will catch up quick enough - they wait till weather gets warm to really push. I also think I had some volunteer seedlings last year get to flowering size by mid-summer, and those sure didn't get started until mid-May. |
| Susan J, | Jan 10, 2010 | Am wondering about the long-term viability of seed of A. curssavica. I have seed left over from 2 years ago, but was going to throw it out as I thought it had lost its viability by now. I found it in a brown paper bag at room temp, so not stored properly. I actually thought I had thrown it out a long time ago, but you know how it is with bags and bags of collected seed at our disposal. Some gets overlooked.
Am wintersowing A. hirtella, A. purpurescens, A. viridis, and A. tuberosa this winter. Already growing A. incarnata grown from seed.
A. curassavica is higher in the cardiac glycosides that protect the Monarch caterpillar somewhat from predators, which is why the Monarch favors it over other milkweeds.
Hmm, I nearly always manage to collect some seed from my tropical milkweeds, so I've not had occasion to test its long-term viability. However, as you'll see in my seed comments for A. tuberosa, that species maintains seed viability for a good number of years. So it's worth a try. |
- Seed from '05 trade. 'Silky Gold' baggy 70F (27d) - 75F (100%G, 2d); 'Red' baggy 70F (21d; 40%G, 4-17d) - 75F (25%G, 3-5d)
- Seed from '06 garden. Baggy 75F (91%G, 6-11d)
- Seed from '07 garden. Baggy 75F (95%G, 5d)
- Seed from '08 garden. Baggy 75F (100%G, 4-6d)
- Seed from '09 garden. Baggy 75F (100%G, 5-8d)
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Last modified:
March 07, 2010
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