The milkweed is here! But shipped dormant–and may not pop up till next spring. What?
Milkweed (Asclepias is the name of the genus, named by Linnaeus in 1753 after the Greek god of healing, Asclepius, son of Apollo) is an amazing supermarket of nutrition for insects and animals, except for humans (for whom many parts of it are mildly toxic). It’s pollinated largely by wasps and bees, but also other insects. And, most famously, it is one of the favorite foods for monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) in their larval form. The parent butterflies lay their eggs on the underside of the leaves, to ensure their babies when hatched have plenty of food. In fact, milkweed even uses its magic medicine to ward off danger from the caterpillars: cardenolides, the very substance produced by many milkweed plants which is toxic to humans, in some studies appear to protect the baby monarchs from a dangerous parasite that can damage their wings.
Asclepias is aptly named: milkweeds have a long history of medicinal use for humans despite not being edible without careful cooking. The Omaha people from Nebraska, the Menominee from Wisconsin and upper Michigan, the Dakota from Minnesota, and the Ponca from Nebraska all traditionally used common milkweed (A. syriaca) for medicinal purposes. The bast fibers of some species can even be used for rope.
Now, the dormant thing: turns out, milkweed plants actually need to experience winter-like cold in order to stimulate spring growth. This means the best time to plant milkweed seeds is in the fall, so the cold temperatures and moisture that come with winter stimulate germination. You can plant milkweed in the spring if you chill it first–this is called “artificial stratification”; you are tricking the plant into thinking it has experienced the cold season already. So, with these new milkweed plants that just arrived in the mail in July, we’re going to simply have to put them into the soil and wait for winter (we decided not to jumpstart them in a refrigerator!).
They don’t look too promising at the moment, but we’re just going to have to wait for them to get comfortable. Ellen planted them today in one of the wildflower beds and in one of the Bogardus plots, along with some hemp.
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