Milkweed Growing Guide: How to Grow Asclepias

Meadows are one of my favorite places to be, largely because of the lovely milkweed that I often find there.

Tall and topped with sprays of flowers, an arrow-straight stem with funky looking oval leaves, and crawling with caterpillars, beetles, and butterflies? Yeah, that’s the plant for me.

You’re probably familiar with the common milkweed seen in meadows and roadsides across the country, but the milkweed family is actually huge. We’re going to take a look at some different cultivars used in gardens and learn how to grow this plant.

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More important than that, though, we’re going to talk about the importance of milkweed in the environment. Here’s what’s ahead in this article:

Buckle in, we’re going to get started.

Milkweed is botanically known as Asclepias spp. and has over one hundred known species. It was named by Carl Linnaeus after the Greek god of healing, Asclepius, and the species is native to the Americas.

This nod to a god of healing is because of the use of the sap as a medicinal aid, namely for dysentery and warts, by the native people in the Americas.

While the milky white latex inside the stems is often toxic, the rest of the fibers in the plant have earned Asclepias the nickname “Silk of America.”

These fibers have been used for insulation and cleaning oil spills and can be found in some hypoallergenic pillows.

But most of us know the value of milkweed because of its necessity in the life cycle of the monarch butterfly.

As a kid, I remember learning that milkweed sap is toxic. But monarch