Pearl Crescent and Swamp Milkweed

The Common Milkweeds are pretty much through flowering for the year, but there are other Asclepias species that are just now going to town. This one, common in one spot on the edge of the millpond, is, most likely, the Swamp Milkweed, a wetlands-loving plant known to botanists as Asclepias incarnata. Native Americans knew members of this widespread genus well and used the plants for all sorts of things: fiber, food, medicine, even a contraceptive. (Drinking a decoction of milkweed and Jack-in-the-Pulpit was thought to cause temporary sterility—although the stomach-churning impact of the drink may have simply resulted in folks no longer being in the mood.) Regardless of its usefulness to our species, Swamp Milkweed is a butterfly magnet, attractive to Monarchs, both adults and caterpillars, and numerous other lepidopterans. The Pearl Crescent is among the species that finds A. incarnata absolutely irresistible. I'm still waiting for the arrival of the Monarchs.