Asclepiadacese. Milk-weed !’amily. 
Perennial herbs (or shrubs) with milky juice. Leaves opposite or 
whorled (in our species);stipules wanting. Flowers perfect, regular, 
usually in umbels. Sepals 5. Corolla 5eparted, the lobes valvate in bud, 
Stamens 5, inserted on the base of the corolla, the filaments united into 
a tube «hich encloses the pistil, the tube bearing a circlet of 5 hooded 
appendages each with an incurved prong, the anthers joined to the pistil, 
their sacs tipped with a membranous appendage, each containing a waxy coherent 
mass of pollen (pollinium), the contiguous pollinia of adjacent anthers being 
suspended in pairs from the glands of the stigma, Pistil of 2 distinct sup- 
erior ovaries, forming 2 follicles in fruit. Seeds tipped with a tuft of 
silky hairs. 
Asclepias. (Tourn.) Le 
Perennial herbs as described above. 
© Plants softly tomentose; leaves 
4 6-9 cme wide I. Ae speciosa 
© Plants very glabrous; leaves 8-15 mm, wide pA. mexicana 
1. A. speciosa Torreye Showy Milkweed. Erect coarse hoary herbs 60-150 m, tall; 
leaves ovate or oval, obtuse, rounded at the base, entire, upper surface glabrate 
in age, the lower softly tomentose, borne on petioles 3-6 mm, long; flowers in 
woolly axillary umbels, on peduncles 5-5 cm, long, the bracts linear, 4-6 mn, long, 
the rays 2-2,5 om. longs sepals 5 mm, long, lanceolate, lightly acuminate, woolly; 
petals purple, elliptical-ovate, 8-10 mm, long, woolly on the outer surface, 
strongly reflexed; hoods yellowish, spreading, 12-15 mm, long; stamen colum 4-5 
mm, tall, the appendages white-scarious; follicles 10 cm, long, 2.5 cm, broad, 
abruptly tapering, softly arachnoid tomentose and with soft herbaceous spine-like 
processes; seeds flattened-oval, margined, 7 mn, long, the tuft 3-3.5 cm, long, 
