MILKWEED FAMILY 



crevice and in extricating itself to carry along a pollen mass to be 

 deposited on another blossom. 



The Milkweed has become so highly specialized for cross-fer- 

 tilization that although each flower-cluster may number fifty 

 blossoms, more or less, it is rare that more than 

 three to five are fertilized so as to produce fruit. 

 The plant makes up for the small number of pods 

 by the enormous number of seeds in each pod. 

 Moreover, each seed possesses an admirable 

 parachute attachment which wafts it away on 

 the wings of the wind, "east of the sun and west 

 of the moon," to the happy land where it finds 

 a home. 



The genus Asclepias is credited in the books 

 with eighty-five species, mostly natives of Amer- 

 ica; of these but two have so far recommended 

 themselves for domestication, and they are rather 

 wildlings brought in upon occasion than to the manner bom. 

 The first is the Butterfly Weed, in color a vivid orange — a flame 

 amid the green — and the othef Asclepias incarnata, which adorns' 

 swampy places and may well have a place in the tangle that it 

 glorifies. 



Flower of Butterfly 

 Weed; Enlarged 



The Silk Vine, Periploca grahca, is a twining shrub from the 

 Mediterranean region which, upon occasion, can climb as high 

 as forty feet. The leaves are oblong-lanceolate, dark-green and 

 shining, from two to four inches long. The brownish-purple 

 flowers are of the milkweed type and borne in loose cymes. The 

 fruit consists of follicles filled with many small, winged seeds. 



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