Milkweed

Third-graders Marci Rogers and Eliza Harmon harvest milkweed seeds from a milkweed pod at Cornerstone Montessori Elementary School in St. Paul on Thursday, March 16, 2023.

She wants to help boost the local monarch population by making milkweed seeds available to anyone who wants them through her Milkweed for Monarchs effort.

A Monarch caterpillar on a milkweed leaf from the book “Nature’s Best Hope: How You Can Save the World in Your Own Yard” by Douglas W. Tallamy.

But once at Chuco’s, a street-smart community center, you’ll see milkweed and sunflowers thriving in a patch of jackhammered asphalt, surrounded by raised beds of dazzling blue nigella and leafy greens bursting out of hydroponic towers.

But some farmers have planted milkweed on the side of their crop fields to counter destroying milkweeds in their fields, Melkonoff said.

Common milkweed, horse nettle, jimsonweed, common pokeweed, cressleaf & common groundsel, pigweed, black nightshade, mountain laurels, and rhododendrons are all considered poisonous plants commonly found in Ohio.

From market vendor Snell Family Farm of Buxton, I bought a centerpiece made with a mix of pine and fir boughs, dried seed heads, milkweed pods, small gourds, an apple and a candle.

Milkweed is the only plant monarch larvae and caterpillars will eat.

Monarch habitats contain milkweed hosts for the caterpillars and nectar plants for the adult butterflies to reproduce, and there are limited available environments for monarch reproduction.

Narrowleaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) blooming in the California summer.

Part of her garden includes a patch of milkweed, which Klusman planted in an effort to attract monarch butterflies to her front porch.

This can be trees (from sugar maple to bur oaks), perennials (from swamp milkweed to black-eyed susan), or shrubs (from ninebark to prickly rose).

You’ll find two of my favorite native plants at the sale: Pink swamp milkweed and Indian pinks.

Milkweed is the sole host plant of the butterfly.

Monarch butterflies rely on Ohio’s five different species of milkweed.

Monarch butterflies rely soley on milkweed as a host plant for their eggs and larva.

Monarch populations have declined along with the disappearance of milkweed; in recent years, they've been a candidate for endangered species status by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Seed packets include cucumber, carrot, marigold, milkweed, California poppy, and many others.

The next day I found two huge, fifth-instar monarch caterpillars on the swamp milkweed.

For the hunters of Red Dead Redemption 2, Milkweed is an ingredient for making poison arrows.