{"id":171240,"date":"2015-07-12T04:06:42","date_gmt":"2015-07-12T03:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/?p=171240"},"modified":"2023-06-27T19:04:15","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T18:04:15","slug":"milkweed-asclepias-syriaca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/milkweed-asclepias-syriaca\/","title":{"rendered":"Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is one of my favorite plants for its globe of sweet\u00a0florets and the bounty of butterflies, bees, and other creatures it attracts.<\/p>\n

Within a milkweed stand there is a large community being nourished along with any onlooker’s imagination. A weed of milk . . . common milkweed is abundant in beauty and value to wildlife.<\/p>\n

And yes, it has a milky-like sap. But the plant\u00a0surpasses in every way the common name used to identify it. Linnaeus’s latin name,\u00a0Asclepias syriaca,<\/em> is more fitting and falls delicately when spoken.<\/p>\n

Asclepias was the Greek god of healing. Clearly, Linnaeus knew of\u00a0milkweed’s medicinal qualities.<\/p>\n

A plant that is so much more than just a ‘weed.’<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Sulphur sp. Butterfly on Milkweed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0A honeybee and Sulphur Butterfly dip into the pink folds of milkweed blossoms.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Great Spangled Fritillary on Milkweed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fritillaries flock to milkweed’s starry flowers and as they flutter from floret to floret the field is more alive and fragrant. I did see a female monarch butterfly nectaring near the fritillary above but could not get a photo. Milkweed plays a vital role in the monarch’s life acting as the host plant for the larva stage of the butterfly. There is more to this story over at my garden blog.<\/p>\n

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Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) is one of my favorite plants for its globe of sweet\u00a0florets and the bounty of butterflies, bees, and other creatures it attracts. Within a milkweed stand there is a large community being nourished along with any onlooker’s imagination. A weed of milk . . . common milkweed is abundant in beauty and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":2196132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSC_1644-web1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[61,7663],"class_list":["post-171240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife","tag-butterflies","tag-milkweed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2196132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}