Plant Spotlight: Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)

Asclepias incarnate. Swamp milkweed can be used in rain gardens and stormwater gardens to filter pollutants and support monarch butterfly habitats. Photo by myiarchus22, CC BY-NC-2.0

Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) is a native, perennial and toxic pink wildflower plant found in swamps, shores, thickets; marshes, moist meadows. Asclepias is the milkweed family of wildflowers essential as a monarch butterfly food source. The swamp (incarnata) variety of milkweed can be grown in urban rain gardens and other residential areas prone to poor drainage.

Description:

Erect, perennial herbs with milky juice; leaves simple, alternate, opposite, or whorled, narrow; flowers 5-parted, in rounded clusters, white, greenish, yellow, orange, or red; fruit dry and inflated, erect, and with many hair-tufted seeds

Growing Season:

Early to late summer

Height:

2-4 ft.

Foliage:

Up to 4-inch, opposite, narrow, lance-shaped, smooth leaves; milky sap is less juice than most species; short-stalked to stalkless

Flower:

1-to 2-in., dull pink flowers, clustered at the top of a tall, branching stem; five recurved petals; elevated central crown, divided

Habitat:

Weedy in disturbed areas, native or naturalized in waste places, roadsides, fields; landscape in flower gardens as herbaceous perennials

Poision:

All parts of this plant are poisonous if ingested. Symptoms include vomiting, stupor, weakness, spasms. The toxic principle is cardiac glycosides and resinoids. TOXIC ONLY IF LARGE QUANTITIES EATEN.

https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/all/asclepias-incarnata/