An Experiment With Butterfly Milkweed

We moved into our home 7 1/2 years ago.  Since then, we have traveled 71st Street to Hoover Rd., going to and from Wichita, at least twice each week.  Conservatively, then, I'd estimate that we've driven by this one spot roughly 100 times a year, for a grand total of about 750 times since we moved here.

Despite driving the same route so many times, it wasn't until yesterday that we spotted beautiful, big butterfly milkweed plants in the ditch along our normal route!  That's right.  Butterfly milkweed, a.k.a. Asclepias tuberosa, with its vivid bright orange blooms.  It's not like this plant is a shy, quiet little mouse, hiding down among the grasses.  No, this plant is a hussy, shouting, "Look at me, world!!!"  And we'd missed it, time and time again.

Now, to cut ourselves some slack, butterfly milkweed would only be in full bloom for about a month, maybe two, each year as we drove by.  Make it an average of 6 weeks per year.  That still means we drove by about 75 times and never saw these plants before.

In our defense, of course, the county road crews have been ridiculously vigilant about mowing the roadsides to a dirty, ragged stubble most years.

But still!

Truthfully, we almost missed the butterfly milkweed yesterday too.  I caught one glimpse of the vivid orange as we drove by, so I asked Greg to turn around so I could verify that there was a plant there.  The orange of butterfly milkweed is incredibly distinctive, so I was pretty sure what I'd seen.  Not only was there one plant, there were FOUR!

It was so exciting to find these plants, the first truly local butterfly milkweed that I'd seen since moving here - but it was rather depressing, too.  Did I mention that the county roadcrews have been great about mowing everything down to a depressing stubble several times a year during each growing season?  The chances of these plants being allowed to set seed is close to zero.  Truly, I'm amazed the plants are alive and as vigorous as they are.

You can't dig native milkweed.  The roots are too deep and you'll kill the plant.  That goes double for attempting anything at this time of year, when it's hot and the plant is blooming.  So I couldn't rescue them that way.  No seeds likely and no transplanting possible.  What to do?

Greg did a little research on the web and started seeing reports of taking milkweed cuttings.  It didn't seem like a viable option, but several sites were reporting success.  The county would be butchering these plants soon anyway - why not try a couple cuttings and see what happened?

So this morning, armed with peanut butter jars of water, clippers, and my camera, we set forth.

Up close, the individual plants were even more stunning than they'd been from the road.  Three of the four were amazingly full of flowers and had obviously been blooming for quite a while, yet still showed new buds that spoke of blooming for much longer still. 

The color of the blooms was a deep, deep orange with hints of red - definitely a deeper color than the orange butterfly milkweed plants in my front garden bed.  The ones in my garden weren't blooming any more either.  They had bloomed for 2 or 3 weeks, and then quit a week or two ago.

While I was looking at the first plant, a butterfly flew in and started to nectar.  It was yellow, which usually denotes a sulfur of some sort, generally a fairly common butterfly.  However, I noticed that the black wing tips were particularly dark.  Then I realized that the tips of the front wings were squared off - a Southern Dogface butterfly (Zerene cesonia)!  Not an unknown butterfly in this area, but not one I commonly see either.

As I watched the butterfly, I debated what to do.  I looked for stems that didn't have blooms on them, thinking those stems would be more likely to root successfully, but there weren't any.  Eventually I carefully selected 3 stems from 2 of the plants and 2 stems from one other.  Why not take cuttings, despite the many blooms?  They'll all get sheared off soon anyway.

Back at home, I carefully removed lower leaves, blooms, and flower buds, dipped the end of each cutting in rooting hormone, and stuck them in wet perlite.  Plastic bags went over the cuttings to keep the humidity of the air up around them until (hopefully) they start to root.  This is my little forest of butterfly milkweed cuttings on the kitchen counter.....

Wish me luck!  I'd love to have some local genetics, especially since these individual plants are so incredibly full of blooms and so deeply colored.  We'll see what happens.