Milkweed Blossom

Milkweed Blossom

These fabulous tiny blossoms are a vital source of nectar for bees, bugs and most importantly, butterflies. They are a larval food source for Monarch Butterflies and their relatives.
The name refers to the milky substance extruded from their stem when broken and which contains alkaloids, latex, and several other complex compounds including cardenolides.*

Carolus Linnaeus named the genus after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, because of the many folk-medicinal uses for the milkweed plants.

Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca or incarnata, is a tall downy plant with clusters of pinkish-white to purple flowers. Flowers consist of 5 slightly curving and hood-shaped petals around a 5 hooded crown. Leaves are approximately 8 cm long, narrow lanceolate and normally dark green with a gray downy back. Plants are 30 to 120 cm in hight and can be found June through August across most of the eastern and central regions of the USA and Canada.

Pollination occurs when the feet or mouthparts of flower visiting insects such as bees, wasps and butterflies, slip into one of the five slits in each flower formed by adjacent anthers. The bases of the pollinia then mechanically attach to the insect, pulling a pair of pollen sacs free when the pollinator flies off.

See ref: Wikipedia

Taken along National Forest Service Rout 44 in the NFS Chattahoochee Wildlife Conservation District in White County, GA USA

Olympus E-3, Sigma 105 mm f/2.8 macro.

Copyright © Richard G. Witham 2009 all rights reserved.
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