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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the February 16, 2007, issued from Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, QUERÉTARO, MÉXICO
MILKWEED FROM CURAÇAO
Now in the dry season, relatively few native plants are flowering here. Typically when you spot something blossoming it turns out to be an invasive species. That's the way it is with one of the most common and conspicuous of plants currently blossoming, shown above. A native of South America but now established as a weed in much of the world's tropics and subtropics, and common throughout Mexico, that's a milkweed with attractively two-toned yellowish orange and reddish orange blossoms, and known by the Latin name of ASCLEPIAS CURASSAVICA. A picture of one beside our entrance road is shown below:
In that picture you can see that milkweed blossoms are very unlike most other flowers. I've set up a whole page describing the milkweeds' unique flower anatomy at www.backyardnature.net/fl_milkw.htm.
Though the milkweed species flowering here now is common and well known, it has a name problem. It goes by a lot of names but none is generally accepted and none is really appropriate. Blood Flower, Scarlet Milkweed, Silkweed, Indian Root, Tropical Milkweed, Bastard Ipecac... I think of it as the Milkweed from Curaçao because that's what its Latin name says, Asclepias curassavica. Curaçao is a small Dutch island in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela, one of the Lesser Antilles.
Asclepas curassavica is another of those invasive weeds I don't mind too much -- especially when I see how Monarchs and other butterflies visit it for nectar. I suspect that in many parts of the American tropics there wouldn't be any Monarchs if the Milkweed from Curaçao wasn't in the neighborhood.
from the April 21, 2008 Newsletter written in the community of 28 de Junio, in the Central Valley 8 kms east of
Pujiltic, Chiapas, MÉXICO
about 800 meters in elevation, ± LAT. 16° 18'N, LONG. -92° 28'
TROPICAL MILKWEED FRUITS SCATTERING SEEDS
The slender pods of our
orange-and-yellow-flowered Tropical Milkweeds, ASCLEPIAS CURASSAVICA, are opening now
dispersing their seeds. This is a noteworthy event for two reasons.
First, this is our main milkweed species, and thus is the chief host plant for the larvae of Monarch Butterflies, who also are common here, thanks to this milkweed.
Second, milkweed seeds are equipped with fuzzy, white parachutes that are wonderful to see floating on breezes across hot fields and pastures.
Above you can see a plant beside the trail through town, the top pod heavily infested with orangish aphids, a lower pod having just disgorged a number of parachuted seeds now awaiting a breeze to carry them off.
Like most other milkweeds, or members of the genus Asclepias, Tropical Milkweeds produce a dense, white latex from any part when injured.