AWhen Does Butterfly Weed Bloom

Sometimes it’s best to let your plants grow and add them to your garden when they’re ready. It’s the same with other plants, and with humans and our emotions. If we try to bloom too soon, we could put ourselves in danger and crush the beauty of the plant rather than see it flourish.Butterflyweed is a long-lived herbaceous perennial in the milkweed family (Apocynaceae, formerly Asclepidaceae) native to much of North America except the northwest, from eastern Canada south to Florida, west to the Dakotas down to Colorado and the southwest, except Nevada, into California, but is most widespread in the eastern half of the U.S. With other common names including butterfly milkweed, orange milkweed, pleurisy root and chigger flower, Asclepias tuberosa is found in prairies and meadows, open woods, along roads and other open areas in zones 3-9.

Butterfly

These are generally all orange but there are yellow or red cultivars (such as ‘Hello Yellow’ and ‘Gay Butterflies’) and naturally occurring populations, all usually with a yellow central column. Each cluster is 2-5 inches across, making an excellent landing platform for butterflies. There are also 5 hairy, light green sepals below the petals which are hidden when the flowers open. The flowers produce copious amounts of nectar so are very attractive to hummingbirds and many insects, not just butterflies, and can also be used as cut flowers. Deadheading may stimulate a second flush of flowers about a month later.This showy plant makes a great addition to home gardens, prairies, native plantings or for naturalizing, rain gardens, and butterfly gardens. They can be planted in masses or combined as an accent with other mid-sized perennials in the sunny border.

The vivid orange color stands out, particularly in combination with blue or purple flowers but some find the intense color hard to blend in some landscapes. Try combining butterfly weed with blue morning glories, globe thistle (Echinops spp.), Penstemon digitalis ‘Husker Red’, or purple speedwells (Veronica spicata or hybrids) inIt or works well with other native perennials such as yellow coreopsis (Coreopsis verticillata), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), goldenrod (Solidago spp.), blazing star (Liatris spp.), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) and R.fulgida, and grasses such as little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) or prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) in a meadow or prairie. It is a larval host plant for several butterflies, including monarch (Danaus plexippus) and the related Queen butterfly (D. gilippus, although this species occurs primarily in Central America into the southern US but may occasionally stray into the Midwest), so you may want to position the plant in the landscape where won’t be an eyesore if it is eaten ragged by caterpillars. (Source:hort.extension.wisc.edu)