MILKWEEDS. 
21 
Towards fall you will generally see the milkweed 
leaves covered with bright yellow and black caterpillars 
that certainly are lovely whether you think, so or not. 
If you take the largest of these caterpillars and put 
them in a box of earth with plenty of fresh milkweed 
leaves to eat as long as they 
want to eat (which will not be 
long), you will see what happens. 
Something happens, and you 
will do well to find out about it. 
Milkweeds have pretty, fra- 
grant flowers that grow together, 
many in a bunch, but not close 
together into a solid head, like 
the little dandelion flowers. Each 
milkweed flower has its own 
little stem. 
Not all of the flowers in a 
bunch of milkweed go to seed. 
Generally only one or two from 
each bunch do. The rest are 
crowded out and wither and fall off, for the milkweed 
flower develops a very large seed pod that holds a 
great many seeds, and there is not room on the stem 
for many of these big pods. 
The flowers of our common milkweed are pink- 
purple in color, and the pods are fuzzy and irregular 
