Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Milkweeds: How many and which ones are in your garden??!, 1 by wind

wind wrote:
good morning :)
I'm trying to add to our milkweed collection too. I have read that monarchs favor egg laying on tropical milkweed (asclepias curassavica, bloodflower) which is not a perennial so it has to be planted each year. We only had a nice patch once and they did LOVE it, I would rank this #1, only I never checked to see how many eggs were layed on it...I got distracted by the aphids! I have direct sowed seeds to no avail the past few years and winter sowed some this year and have a pot full of seedlings to sow! yippie!

We also have swamp milkweed (asclepias incarnata) which I planted for the first time last year, and I forgot to check to see if it came back. I'll have to let you know if it did, I hope it did.

We have butterfly weed (asclepias tuberosa) but frankly I don't recall ever seeing activity from monarchs on it

Last, but not least, in fact I would rank this one as their second favorite: Common milkweed (asclepias syriaca). It does spread ~ I feel bad pulling up stalks that seem to pop up everywhere. We have a patch growing along with bronze fennel and a butterfly bush on one of our berms.

Some milkweeds I would like to add are: Purple milkweed (asclepias purpurascens) and I'm sure others....I forget what is available and need to look up a list