Swamp Milkweed — with Friends!
I had a request to talk about some shade and water loving plants, and then Pokeweed. So look forward to those coming your way soon!
Yes people, it’s yet another milkweed plant. But this one likes water — and in addition to some fancy blooms, we can see some fun bug friends hanging out in the restored environment!
Where is it?
In our hot August, Swamp Milkweed, or Asclepias incarnata, is still blooming. It needs a lot of moisture, so it’s happiest in a rain garden or somewhere continually damp — unless you enjoy watering your plants. It really likes wet feet!
I don’t see this much along roadsides. I haven’t done much regional swamp exploration yet, so perhaps I’ll find it there. It’s native to nearly the entire USA less the entire west coast and for some reason, Lousiana (USDA). Strange — all the surrounding states have it! Hmmm….
Anyway, it grows in full sun to part shade, is a perennial, and also reseeds with those lovely white fluffy milkweed seeds we all know and love.
Swamp Milkweed Friends
Check it out! We have some fine looking Monarch Butterfly caterpillars hanging out on this bunch of Swamp Milkweed. He looks fat and happy. I actually found five of them on this bunch of milkweed alone; not all were as big as this one.
My four-year-old freaked out pretty big time because, “Mommy, he has two faces!” Check it out — Monarch caterpillars really DO look like they have two faces, one on each end!
Why? Well these suckers are pretty much fat sitting ducks. Like most caterpillars they don’t move very much. So this species has evolved to scare away predators by looking scary! Birds don’t eat them because they retain the poison from the milkweed plants that they devour — as their bright colors advertise. And they have a second, false face, on their… hind ends… to scare away other predators from attacking that end so they don’t get bit! It even has fake antennae. Pretty cool, huh?
We also have a Large Milkweed Bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus) on our Swamp Milkweed! These brightly colored bugs actually fly like beetles and they really pop. You can see this guy looking fancy, hanging out next to some swamp milkweed pods. There were a bunch of these guys as well. Looks like a pretty healthy ecosystem!
See what you miss out on when you spray your gardens with pesticides? You loose all your cool little garden friends!
There were some Small Milkweed Bugs as well, but the pictures of them didn’t turn out. They were considerably more active and kept flying away when I got the camera up close.
Many thanks to Benjamin Banneker Park, who maintains this rain garden.
To read more about other milkweed plants, check out Common Milkweed and Butterfly Milkweed!
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