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Milkweeds produce clusters of flowers with small, heavy petals and a distinctive crown that perches above them-fitting floral royalty for butterflies such as the monarch and queen.

The plant's name comes from a milky latex-rich fluid that most milkweeds secrete to seal wounds. Many milkweeds attract monarch butterflies, whose yellow-black-and-white caterpillars feed on their leaves. Scarlet milkweed (Asclepias curassavica), also known as tropical milkweed, bloodflower or silkweed, is one of the most beautiful and commercially available of butterfly plants. Before its flowers open, this milkweed's buds are scarlet, but the open petals are deep red-orange and the crown a lighter orange, providing striking contrast with narrow, pointed, dark-green leaves.

Scarlet milkweed is native to South America, but introduced and sometimes invasive in tropical and subtropical regions around the world. It occurs in the wild in South Florida, its seeds carried by the wind on silken parachutes. Most milkweeds are poisonous to humans, containing chemicals that affect heart rate. Monarch caterpillars tolerate these chemicals and incorporate them into their tissues, producing butterflies that birds avoid. In small doses milkweed chemicals have medicinal value. The scarlet milkweed has long been known as "pleurisy root" for its use in folk medicine. Milkweeds' scientific name Asclepias, after the Greek god of medicine, recognizes their medicinal value.

Scarlet milkweed is a perennial that can be grown as an annual. It prefers sunny areas but can tolerate a diversity of soil conditions and can grow to over three feet tall.

-Jerome A. Jackson,

Florida Gulf Coast University