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#swamp milkweed
jillraggett · 2 months
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Plant of the Day
Tuesday 6 February 2024
The herbaceous perennial Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed) has clusters of lilac purple flowers in bud, opening to white and are then followed by distinctive seed heads. This strong stemmed plant exudes a milky sap (hence the common name) which can be a skin irritant.
Jill Raggett
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anipgarden · 11 months
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*cracks knuckles* Alright everyone strap in.
Hi, I'm Ani, the appointed Milkweed Queen of several Discord group chats, and I'm gonna talk about some of my favorite types of milkweed because its Earth Day, I'm bored, and I had nothing else ready to post. Everyone ready?
I'm not going to give these a formal ranking, I'm just going to ramble about them.
We all know the important reasons to like milkweed--supporting Monarchs, feeding the pollinators, restoring native species to your local habitat and creating an environment for many creatures to live in, that's all fantastic obviously. With that established, this ranking system will have little to do with that. We're talking aesthetics, babey! And any fun facts I happen to toss in are, well, fun facts. If you learn about a new kind of milkweed from this, or want to chime in with your own favorites, by all means let me know!
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Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)! If you've been following my blog for awhile, you likely know I've been on a Grand Quest to find, purchase, and/or grow swamp milkweed for a few years now. Honestly, though, who can blame me! Look at those vibrant pink flowers, contrasting with those bright green leaves! Love at first sight, I'm telling you. I've also heard that it smells like vanilla. Vanilla! It's also, reportedly, one of the few types of milkweed that excels in wet environments, and even though my environment isn't very wet, we stan a queen for that quality.
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Whether you prefer to call it Sandhill Milkweed or Pinewoods Milkweed, Asclepias humistrata is a champion of sandy soils and also my heart. I hadn't looked too far into this species until late last year, when I was helping another friend look at different milkweeds, but how could I not look into this beautiful plant! With pink stems and veins as early as the seedling stage, pinkish-white flowers and a low-growing spread habit, I would be honored to grow such a specimen in my garden. Their inch-thick, foot-long tap roots help them to quickly spring back to life after a wildfire, providing important food and habitat for creatures returning to the area. How lovely!
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Redring milkweed (Asclepias variegata) is another species I hadn't looked too far into until this year, and honestly at great detriment to myself. I'll be honest! I may have ignored this queen at first because I'm not big on white flowers, but those red rings...! Ooh, I want this so bad. The leaves are also fairly big and a lovely dark green, which just makes the white and red pop out more!
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Heartleaf milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia) is honestly so iconic, I wish it was native to my region! If you live on the West coast... grow some for me please. How can you not love this specimen! Dusty green heart-shaped leaves directly attached to pink stems, these stunning deep reddish-purple flower clusters...! I continued following one of the most annoying people I'd ever witnessed on Instagram for two months just because I first saw this species in a tiktok of his.
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Purple milkweed (Asclepias purparescens) is honestly just. A queen. What else is there to say? Look how purple she is! So purple I almost can't believe it's even real, and yet they are! Not native to my region, far as I know, which is a bummer. I've heard they're hard to grow, but if you can manage it? Share your secrets with the world, honestly, we need more of this plant in our lives.
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Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is honestly just a classic. I love the light pink of the flowers, and those leaves are huge! I've heard they spread like wildfire, but with clusters of blooms like this? How can you even be too mad about that?
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Showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa). Honestly I'm not going to pretend I was always crazy about this species, but the more I see it pop up on iNaturalist, the more I find myself growing fond of it. These flowers look like crazy fireworks, and honestly, kinda have to stan.
"Oh, Ani, you have so many lovely favorites! Do you have any least favorite--" Tropical milkweed, hands down. I appreciate it's value as more of a 'babys first milkweed' plant but I'm tired of seeing it everywhere, especially knowing it's a bit invasive in my area?
Anyways, these are some of my favorite milkweed species! What are some of yours?
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vandaliatraveler · 9 months
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Early summer at Summit Lake, a quick detour off the Highland Scenic Highway in the Monongahela National Forest.
From top: an unidentified fungi growing in a mossy nook; an impressive young Berkeley's polypore (Bondarzewia berkeleyei), which is not a true polypore but a member of the Russulales order; another massive Berkeley's polypore with my hand for perspective - these beauties can grow up to three feet wide and produce additional shelf-like caps from a single stem, giving them a tiered appearance as they mature; the tall and stately foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis), whose profusion of tubular white flowers draws hordes of long-tongued bees and hummingbirds from late spring to early summer; common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), whose large, dangling umbels of pink to purplish flowers are Mother Nature's ultimate pollinator buffets; swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), also known as rose milkweed, a wetlands-loving beauty with narrow, lanceolate leaves; black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), an irresistible summer aster with a prominent, dark brown button at the center of its flower head; and the sensual arc of a fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium), whose flowers have elongated, dangling stamens and a four-cleft, curling stamen.
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Wasps
Because they don't get enough love. Unfortunately they are also very fast, which makes getting photos of them difficult, but as you can see, they really like flowers. :)
I've always thought of them as the cool and elegant versions of their fuzzier, cuter cousins. Never hated them, just respected their space. Those that sting (many don't) only do so when they or their nests are threatened, never for nothing. It's just sometimes "nest threatened" means you accidentally hit it with the end of your broom that you were resting against a tree where you had no idea a nest even was...Anyway, many are carnivorous, but they are also pollinators.
All photos mine, unedited. Featured wasps include stump-stabbers (native), yellowjackets (native), bald-faced hornet (native), and others I'm not sure about. Featured flower hosts include swamp milkweed (native), white wood aster (native), and a rhododendron cultivar (not native).
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One day I will get a very good photo of one of those gorgeous iridescent blue-black wasps...
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southernsolarpunk · 9 months
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Oh hey
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Did I tell you guys that I acquired a swamp milkweed? (Look I’m collecting milkweed like Pokémon cards I don’t have a problem) I planted it in the lowest part of the yard, under a tree so it’s a bit more moist than the rest of the yard!
It was definitely a task to get it from my favorite nursery because they kept selling out of milkweed, which is a wonderful problem to have! (In fact, they sell out of a lot of native plants there- I love it!)
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ainawgsd · 9 months
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It's almost sunflower time!
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And the swamp milkweed is in bloom!
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maeganbobaegan · 2 years
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Pollinator favorites in the shop 🦋
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nikki439 · 2 years
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i made a friend!
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May 2022: For The Monarchs
I put bird netting over our swamp milkweed today: 
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To prevent this. Apparently, Monarchs taste bad to birds is a learned behavior: 
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I tied the bird netting to a couple of tomato cages with strips of old pantyhose: 
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The moth mullein blossomed: 
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Don’t disturb me. I’m metamorphosing: 
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Grilling steaks with carrots, onions & leeks: 
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Yes, that is a pizza tray & it works great for grilling finer cuts of vegetables: 
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Sunday dinner: 
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rjalker · 2 years
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Who wants to name my new baby swamp milkweed?
It was grown from one of the like, I think three seeds my plant gave me last year, so it's my grandbaby :)
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quarangreens · 5 months
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anipgarden · 6 months
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Hey fellow milkweed nerds of Tumblr I have a question.
So. Swamp milkweed. It's pink! That's pretty cool. I wanna know how pink.
Because whenever I google Swamp Milkweed, whether its to look for seeds or plants for sale or just to show other people, the flowers look like this.
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[ID: Three pictures of swamp milkweed, all a very very bright vivid hot pink with white middles.]
Thats Fucking Hot Pink. This bright ass pink is what drew me to the plant in the first place. If I were to find my Dream Swamp Milkweed, it would be this pink.
However, a lot of the times, I end up finding swamp milkweed that looks more like this.
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[ID: Two pictures of swamp milkweed, both from the same plant. The flowers are a light, nearly white, light pink.]
Its a much lighter, more of a strawberry-milk pink. These are pictures I took from my own swamp milkweed plant, but from the pictures I've seen in my gardening server, a lot of them have plants in a color similar to this.
So what I'm curious about is. If you grow swamp milkweed, or have seen it growing in the wild, have you ever seen it as pink in the first example? Or is it just Photoshop magic? And if you do have it that pink... do you have any seeds you'd be willing to share?
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vandaliatraveler · 2 years
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Rose milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), also known as swamp milkweed, the last of the milkweeds to bloom in this area.
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Bzzz!
Just some bees in my garden and in the fields and on a neighbourhood walk. :)
Featured bees include bumblebees (native), green sweatbees (native), honeybees (invasive), carpenter bees (native), and some I'm not sure about.
Featured flower hosts include bull thistles (invasive weed), rose of sharon (invasive), New England aster (native), cup plant (native), starthistle (not native), Nuttall's sunflower (native), purple coneflower (native), anise hyssop (native), white wood aster (native), swamp milkweed (native), sow thistle (invasive weed), creeping charlie (invasive), creeping thistle (invasive weed), wild rose (native maybe), wild bergamot (native), bride's feathers (native), bigleaf lupin (native maybe or invasive), and upright prairie coneflower "Mexican hat" (native species, but a cultivar).
All my photos, unedited. Don't mind the weirdness of the third last photo. It's my phone's "portrait" which I found out belatedly can have, uh, interesting results.
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zacharialend · 8 months
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Sip.
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woodavens · 9 months
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Honey bee butt on a swamp milkweed
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