Tag: milkweed

Orange Flowering Butterfly Milkweed

Be careful when buying milkweed plants for your Florida landscape. Tropical milkweed can actually harm monarchs.

Be careful when purchasing milkweed in Florida. We all want to help the monarchs by providing more milkweed for their caterpillars, but the wrong kind can be dangerous for them. “Tropical” and “Orange” varieties look a lot alike but one is potentially harmful to the life cycle of the Monarch.

Good

Orange flowering milkweed is also known as Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa). It is native to many parts of north America. This one has orange flowers – no red.

butterflyweed
Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa) has all orange flowers.

Bad

The Tropical Milkeed (shown below) is not the same thing. And the tropical milkweed, which has red and orange-yellow flowers, is actually bad for the monarchs. (Because they look so much alike, I thought they were one and the same. This blog post was originally about propagating and planting this type!)

It is one you may come across often when shopping for milkweed in Florida. It is also called Scarlet, Silky Scarlet, Mexican, Red, or Blood. The key here is that it has red flowers. They look nearly identical in form to the native orange milkweed, so don’t be fooled.

Say NO to Red Flowering Milkweed

This type of milkweed can have a parasite that infects the caterpillar which in turn infects the butterfly. Also, it does not die back and lose it’s leaves which may interfere with migration patterns. Read about this here at the Nola site.

This link also has images of the Swamp Milkweed and others that are okay for the butterflies. Look for pink, white or orange flowering types.

orange butterfly weed flower
no to tropical milkweed

Already Growing in the Yard?

Look for tips about cutting the tropical milkweed down at certain times of year so the Monarchs won’t use it. (The link to Nola above talks about that.) But the fact that this type of plant can spread a disease has convinced me to destroy the few plants I do have. None of them are thriving anyway.

The Monarch Butterfly Migration Story

What to Look For When Shopping

Know the names of the native milkweed for your area. It may not be blooming at the nursery. It is also very hard to find. In fact, finding a grower who carries native plants is not all that easy to find in itself.

There is one place near me and when I visited recently all the milkweed plants were gone. I’m not sure which kind they were selling but the section was empty. I hope it was not the tropical variety.

At the Plant Real Florida site you can shop by hardiness zone and find shops that sell plants and / or seeds.

monarch butterfly milkweed

Plant Florida Native Milkweed to Save Monarch Butterflies

My Florida yard is small but I am trying to fill it with native plants to attract bees, butterflies and wildlife. After reading another blog about planting milkweed to help monarchs survive and thrive, I began researching the types of milkweed to plant here in central Florida where I live.

Do Your Research and Plant Native

Big box stores sell plants that look nice, and are not necessarily concerned with native species. Customers usually want pretty things to brighten up the home landscape.

Bringing non-native plants into the yard can end up being a problem. Florida contains many invasive species – the air-potato and Brazilian Pepper trees come to mind. They invade and push out more native plants. This is also true for wildlife that has been imported, but that is another blog post.

Although this page is about milkweed, researching all types of native plants for the landscape will go a long way in helping the butterflies and birds. Native plants will survive nicely, with little help, when planted where they should be.

Butterfly weed orange flowers for monarch butterflies
Butterflyweed

Types of Florida Native Milkweed

There may be more types, but this is what I found when writing this page. Visiting a local nursery that sells local plants could be very helpful.

  • Orange Butterfly Weed – reddish orange flowers, blooms late spring through fall – I had a volunteer pop up in my yard!
  • Pink Milkweed – light pink flowers, summer blooming
  • Swamp Milkweed – light pink to white, tolerates some shade
pink milkweed plants to save monarch butterflies
Pink Milkweed

Read more about milkweed and the Monarchs at this page on the Florida Wildflower Foundation site.

Plant Real Florida is a great site for anyone wishing to fill their yard with native vegetation.

Florida Milkweed pdf With Photos and Info

The link above goes to a file found on the Xerces Society site which has many articles about Project Milkweed and has Regional Milkweed Guides in printable pdf. form for many areas of the country.

monarch butterfly milkweed
Monarch butterfly on milkweed