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Urban species # 109: Giant milkweed Calotropis procera
Photos by [livejournal.com profile] 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.





Date: 2008-06-26 01:07 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
great pic of the aphids. truly amazing!

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