Kansas Native Plants • Landscaping

Common Milkweed | Asclepias syriaca

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Seed orders are shipped when order is received.

Each packet of Common Milkweed contains 60 seeds.

Price: Seed $ 2.50

Plant Species Synonym Names

Family

Milkweed - Asclepiadaceae

Image

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Description

Common milkweed blooms profusely and the flowers have the sweetest smell. It tends to be more aggressive than some of the other milkweeds, but not excessively. It is best for a natural planting though. The young pods are edible if cooked. The stems produce fiber that can be used for making cordage or even paper. Being a milkweed it provides food for the larva of the Monarch butterfly.

Characteristics

Growth Habit:Herb: broad-leaved, herbaceous (non-woody) plant; wildflowers and forbs
Grass: grass-like plants; graminoids
Tree: woody with usually a single trunk, tall
Shrub: woody multi-stemmed plants, low growing
Vine: a woody or herbaceous plant that climbs or sprawls
Herb

Life Span:Annual: herbaceous; lives only one year
Biennial: herbaceous; lives two years, flowering the second
Perennial: herbaceous; lives three or more years
Woody: woody; stems that grow more than a year
Perennial

Mature Height: 4.0'

Mature Width: 2.0'

Flower Color: Lavender

Sun Requirement:Full Sun: direct sun 8 or more hours of the day
Part Sun: direct sun 4 to 8 hours of the day; about half a day of sun
Shade: direct sun 0 to 4 hours of the day
Full Sun

Water Requirement:Wet: Soil is soggy or marshy
Moist: Soil tends to stay moist and rarely dries out
Medium: Average soil moisture, little or now slope
Drained: Soil is well drained, never soggy; medium slope
Dry: Soil is dry, often typical of rocky soil; steep slope
Drained to Dry

Companion Plants

False Sunflower
Heliopsis helianthoides

Switchgrass
Panicum virgatum