Magenta to Pink 



From the silky coma on which the small seeds float away 

 from long pods to found new colonies, from the opposite leaves, 

 milky juice, and certain structural resemblances in the flowers, 

 one might guess this plant belonged to the milkweed tribe. For- 

 merly it was so classed ; and although the botanists have now 

 removed its family one step away, the milkweed butterflies, es- 

 pecially the Monarch (Anosia plexippus), ignoring the arbitrary 

 dividing line of man, still includes the dogbane on its visiting list. 

 We know that this plant derived its name from the fact that it was 

 considered poisonous to dogs ; and we also know that all the 

 tribe of milkweed butterflies are provided with protective secre- 

 tions which are distasteful to birds and predaceous insects, enjoy- 

 ing their immunity from attack, it is thought, from the acrid, 

 poisonous character of the foliage on which the caterpillars feed. 



Common Milkweed or Silkweed 



(Asclepias Syriaca) Milkweed family 

 (A. cornuti of Gray) 



Flowers Dull, pale greenish purple pink, or brownish pink, borne 

 on pedicels, in many flowered, broad umbels. Calyx inferior, 

 5-parted ; corolla deeply 5-cleft, the segments turned back- 

 ward. Above them an erect, 5-parted crown, each part 

 called a hood, containing a nectary, and with a tooth on 

 either side, and an incurved horn projecting from within. 

 Behind the crown the short, stout stamens, united by their 

 filaments in a tube, are inserted on the corolla. Broad 

 anthers united around a thick column of pistils terminating 

 in a large, sticky, ^-angled disk. The anther sacs tipped 

 with a winged membrane ; a waxy, pear-shaped pollen- 

 mass in each sac connected with the stigma in pairs or fours 

 by a dark gland, and suspended by a stalk like a pair of sad- 

 dle-bags. Stem: Stout, leafy, usually unbranched, 3 to 5 ft. 

 high, juice milky. Leaves: Opposite, oblong, entire-edged, 

 smooth above, hairy below, 4 to 9 in. long. Fruit: 2 thick, 

 warty pods, usually only one filled with compressed seeds 

 attached to tufts of silky, white, fluffy hairs. 



Preferred Habitat Fields and waste places, roadsides. 



Flowering Season June September. 



Distribution New Brunswick, far westward and southward to 

 North Carolina and Kansas. 



After the orchids, no flowers show greater executive ability, 

 none have adopted more ingenious methods of compelling insects 

 to work for them than the milkweeds. Wonderfully have they 



US 



