365 Urban Species. #109: Giant Milkweed

Urban species # 109: Giant milkweed Calotropis procera
Photos by cottonmanifesto

Along the road to my in-laws' house are large weeds with round, opposite leaves. In some places they are big enough to be called shrubs; in others they can only be called trees. They have attractive, purple, star-shaped flowers, that remind me of the tiny flowers of black swallow-wort, an invasive climbing milkweed. When we looked at them closely we found yellow aphids, tended by ants. The only place I have seen yellow aphids before is on common milkweed plants.

I suspected, given these clues, that the plant was a kind of milkweed. The fact that milkweeds are poisonous, and that all the wild plants in Antigua have to be goat-resistant in some way helped reinforce this suspicion. When I got home, research bore this out.

Native to India and Africa, giant milkweed has a history of various uses, mainly medicinal. Studies in the new world have shown that it is useful as a food plant for monarch butterfly caterpillars. Why it was brought to Antigua is anyone's guess, but it has become one of the most common waste area weeds on the island.

( With milkweed-feeding insects )

365 Urban Species. #118: Ground Ivy

Photos by cottonmanifesto
Urban species #118: Ground Ivy Glechoma hederacea

Members of the mint family (Lamiaceae) can be identified by their square stems. This is our clue that ground ivy isn't an ivy at all. Like most of the weeds found in the cities of New England, ground ivy is a plant native to Europe, used in the past for food and/or medicine. Ground ivy can be made into tea, used for various medicinal reasons, and was used to flavor beer before hops edged it out.