ASCLEPIDAGE.^-MILKWEED FAMILY 



BUTTERFLY WEED. ORANGE MILKWEED 



Asclepias tuber bsa. 



The most brilliant of our native Milkweeds; with tuberous roots; 

 found in dry fields. 



Stem. — One to two feet high, hairy, leafy; milky juice scanty or 

 wanting. 



Leaves. — Alternate, sessile, lance-oblong, thick, margins slightly 

 reflexed. 



Flowers. — Bright-orange, in many-flowered terminal clusters. 



Calyx. — Five-parted, segments acute, turned backward. 



Corolla. — ^Deeply five-cleft, the segments turned backward. Above 

 them an erect five-parted crown, each part called a hood, with a tooth on 

 either side and an incurved horn projecting from within. 



Stamens. — ^Five, inserted on the corolla, short, stout, united by their 

 filaments into a tube; anthers broad, united and covering the fleshy 

 mass of the two united stigmas, terminating in a large sticky five-angled 

 disk. The anthers are tipped with a winged membrane and the pollen 

 coheres as a waxy pear-shaped mass. 



Ovaries. — ^Two, forming follicles in fruit. 



Seeds. — Many. 



The flowers of the Milkweed are difficult for an amateur to 

 understand because of the abnormal development of a horned 

 and hooded crown which becomes the most prominent part of the 

 blossom and quite overshadows the corolla. This crown is com- 

 posed of five little cups like minute cornucopias surrounding a 

 central column. These are the nectaries containing the sweets so 

 attractive to insects; as one will readily understand who watches 

 a bumble-bee as he follows the circle thrusting his long black tongue 

 deep into each little horn. It is evident that the flower counts 

 upon one or more of the bee's legs getting caught in an anther 



3SI 



