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Kathy’s Garden Writing |
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MILKWEED: FRIEND OR FOE? Ask farmers about milkweed, and they’ll rail against it. Ask botanists, and they’ll sing its praises. So let’s get better acquainted with this chameleon of the plant world. The scientific name, Asclepias, honors the Greek god of healing; and indeed many folk medicine remedies derive from it. The plant’s colloquial name, milkweed, refers to the milky sap of the leaves and stems of some of the 200 known varieties from around the world. We’ll focus on several North American natives, as well as a few introductions from the gardening industry. Native east of the Rockies, common milkweed, A. syriaca, seems the essence of summer in sunny fields and verges, with dull pinkish-purple flowers waving atop two-to six foot stems. The flowers are followed by ripening pods filled with distinctive silky-tufted seeds. Growing in colonies spread by underground rhizomes and windborne seed, this plant can indeed be a bane for farmers, as its romps across open ground, competing with newly-planted crops. The leaves and seed pods also contain cardiac glycosides which, like digitalis, can affect the heart muscles of grazing livestock. So eradication efforts in farmland are understandable. But what farmers have labeled a weed, native plant specialists cherish as an important part of the natural ecosystem. All summer long, winged creatures, some from far away places, flutter and hover and buzz -- bejeweling the landscape, working at pollination and honey-making -- and relying on milkweed’s bounty to sustain them. Most notably, larvae of the monarch butterfly feed exclusively on milkweed’s toxic leaves, thus inoculating themselves against predation by birds and other insects. And adult monarchs (as well as other butterfly species, bees, and hummingbirds) thrive on the glucose-rich floral nectar. So where you have room for its leisurely spread, in unused meadows and byways, please welcome the beneficence of common milkweed. For the more cultivated parts of your garden, consider a close relative, A. tuberosa, or butterfly weed, an orange cluster-flowered native, blooming on one-to-two foot stems, in sandy or even gravelly soil. In addition to the monarch, larvae of the queen butterfly feast on its leaves, while hordes of other airborne companions sip the nectar of its brilliant flowers. Also popular are a gold-flowered cultivar, ‘Hello Yellow,’ and a red-yellow mix called ‘Gay Butterflies.’ In moist soil conditions, try the native swamp milkweed, A. inearnata. Its intense purple-pink flowers gleam all summer on two-to-three foot stems. Or tone it down with the cultivar ‘Cinderella’ -- dark pink buds opening to palest pink. If rosy hues don’t suit, go neutral with the pure white cultivar “Ice Ballet.’ Swamp milkweed too attracts butterflies, bees, and hummers, with vanilla-scented seduction. ______________________________ Life is necessarily full of compromises, and this is an important one. Locally-raised food and family farms are a delightful gift of summer in rural communities. But so are our royal visitors from far away places, monarchs and queens, and the hard working pollinators and honey bees who accompany them. In this case, with thoughtful planning, we may indeed be able to have it both ways. Kathleen Arcuri Published in the Benton New, May 3, 2009 |