365 Urban Species. #173: Common Milkweed

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Photo by cottonmanifesto. Location: Brookline Ave, in front of Beth Israel parking garage, Boston.
Urban species #173: Common milkweed Ascelpias syriaca

This familiar weed of fields and roadsides may turn up in any sunny, unmowed patch of soil in the city. It prefers dry soil and some space for its rhizomes to spread. This time of year its globular clusters of pink, star shaped flowers appear, attracting bees and butterflies. It is famously the host plant for the monarch butterfly, whose larva is one of many insects that feed on the toxic foliage. These insects incorporate the milkweed poison into their own tissues, and advertise the fact with bold yellow, orange, or red colors.

Despite the fact that milkweed is well known to be poisonous, indigenous people and wild food enthusiasts have historically eaten it--either young shoots or after boiling. Like most toxic weeds, milkweed has a history of medicinal use as well, for everything from asthma to warts. It was even reportedly used by Native Americans as part of an "antifertility concoction."

In the fall milkweed produces large pods filled with seeds borne on silky fluff parachutes. This material was used to fill lifejackets during World War II. I remember pulling the fluff out of the pods as a child, tossing seeds up into the breeze and watching them drift off to the sky.