Swamp Milkweed, Asclepias incarnata L., Native Minnesota Wildflower plant, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

	Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden
	Common Name	Scientific Name	Plant Family	Garden Location	Prime Season
	Swamp Milkweed	Asclepias incarnata L.	Milkweed (Asclepiadaceae)	Woodland - Bog	Early to Late Summer
Other names and notes	A common plant of bogs, swamps and wet places, this milkweed can reach to six feet in height with divided branches toward the top. The striking flowers (in umbels at the top) vary from pink to rosy-purple. Milkweed flowers, when open, have five erect hood-like nectaries with the petal parts bent downward. The hoods each have a small horn on the inner side that curves inward and is shorter than the hood. The seeds form in long pods with many seeds on silk-like hair. Leaves are lance like and opposite. Milky juice. Flowering is usually not until mid July and continues well into August. The genus name, Asclepias, is for the Greek god of healing.



Above: Plants typically bloom from late July into mid-August.
Below left: Seed pods form in an upright position. Below right: The seed pods beginning to open in mid-September, 21 days after the photo of the green pods on the left. Note the way the seeds are at the bottom of the pod and the silky hair of each seed is attached to the top of the pod. Bottom left: Seeds emerging from the pod and taking to the air.


Left: Seed pods formed in late August.

Notes: This plant is indigenous to the Garden area. Eloise Butler catalogued it on May 31, 1907. It is native to most counties in Minnesota except a scattered few in the central part of the state. Likewise in North American it is found throughout except the extreme west.

Eloise Butler wrote this about Milkweeds: "Most of the milkweeds, as the term implies, are furnished with a copious, milky juice. Crawling insects are likely to be covered and impaled by this sticky fluid, which exudes from wounds made by their sharp claws, as they scale the stems of the plants, and thus prevents them from rifling the nectar provided by the flowers for the pollen-distributing, hairy-bodied flying insects. Wonderful are the adaptations of the flower to desirable insect guests. Above the petals is a crown of five hood-like nectaries, each bearing within a slender, inverted horn. The center of the flower is designedly slippery. When an insect alights on this slimy surface to sip the abundant nectar, her feet slip and are tightly caught in crevices, also of fell design. When she extricates her toes, so to speak, she drags out attached to them a dangling pair of pollen masses - pollinia, a part of which is sure to adhere to the pistil of the next milkweed flower she visits. Insects have been caught at this season with stalks of these pollinia attached to every one of their six feet." Published in the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune July 9, 1911

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References: Plant characteristics are generally from sources 15, 16, 30, 31, 33, W2 & W3. Distribution principally from W2 and also 31, 34 and W1. Planting history generally from 1, 4 & 4a. Other sources by specific reference. See Reference List for details.

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