ASCLEPIADACEAE (MILKWEED FAMILY) 



315 



BUTTERFLY WEED 

 Asclepias tuber osa, L. 



Other English names: Orange Milkweed, Orange root, White Root, 



Pleurisy Root, Wind Root, Swallow-wort. 

 Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds. 

 Time of bloom: June to August. 

 Seed-time: August to October. 

 Range: Ontario to Minnesota, southward to Florida, Texas, and 



Arizona. 

 Habitat: Dry fields and pastures. 



The most showy of the Milkweeds. Where abundant, the plant 

 may be made to pay for the cost of its suppression by the sale of 

 its white, tuberous roots, which are 

 valuable medicinally and bring six 

 to ten cents a pound in the drug 

 market; they should be collected in 

 autumn, when well stored with sus- 

 tenance for the winter. 



Stems several from the clustered 

 tubers, one to two feet high, erect, 

 branched at the top, round, and 

 very hairy ; they lack the milky 

 juice so characteristic of the family. 

 Leaves alternate, oblong to lance- 

 shaped, acute or sometimes obtuse 

 at apex, entire, hairy on both sides, 

 sessile or with very short petioles. 

 Flowers in large flat-topped umbels 

 terminating stem and branches, bril- 

 liant orange in color; butterflies of 

 many kinds are nearly always hover- 

 ing about them ; the five lower seg- 

 ments of the corolla are reflexed 



and the crown above it has five small, spreading hoods, each 

 of which has within it a slender, incurving horn. Stamens five, 

 inserted on the base of the corolla, the filaments forming a tube 

 which incloses the pistil, the anthers adherent to the stigma; 

 ovaries two, with very short styles connected at the summit by 



220 ._ B utterfly Weed 

 (Asdepias tuberosa). x I 



