I would be interested in the milk weed seed I have Senna variety Christmas very pretty show of butter yellow flowers or orchid tree seed deep pink

Thanks Dbarron....problem w/that is that A. syriaca around here (mostly on roadside or along RR bank) has already flowered....most asclepias is in the "podding" (is that a word?) stage so I think these plants have possibly missed the boat....they are at least 3 yrs old and have never flowered. Two are fairly well shaded but the third w/the shoots at the bottom is in full sun AND there are 2-3 patches of vigourously flowering A. tuberosa nearby growing under the same conditions.

byrdlady, it's so good to hear this! where i grew up in western PA therew were syriaca grwing everywhere roadside, with nearly every patch having monarch colonies. now the milkweed is less common, because of more mowing, and monarchs are much less common, even up there. i've been trying to get syriaca going here, too. i have some nice patches of tuberosum after working on it for 8 or 9 yrs, and have grown currasvica from seed before. recently got some otherr ones (don't recall off the top), and just this yr, noticed 3 cats on my tuberosum. so maybe it does take a while for them to come. ralph gave me some potted currasavica, which i hope to overwinter in the cool basement, and some cats, too. hoping they'll come back in spring and lay eggs. the last one is making a chrysalis now. your expeience heartens me that i wasn't doing anything wrong. tammy

I think it depends on how good your site is, how much competition from other plants, and how much messiness you can tolerate. Stopping the spread of seeds will not prevent syriaca plants from spreading underground. I have a clump of syriaca in a rich, weedy creek drainage in my yard, where I let a single plant spread over five years or so. It has migrated about ten feet (or more) inevery direction within this bed, though it is interspersed with other species (not a monoculture). Every spring I also find multiple stems erupting in my mowed yard, sometimes more than ten feet from the border. This, too, is not a problem, since I control its spread by mowing, but it shows the potential for spreading. I also grow three other milkweeds: butterfly, swamp (incarnata) and purple (purpurascens?). None of these spread like syriaca. Butterfly is both gorgeous and long-lived; it has never self-seeded or spread by root. Incarnata is elegant and well behaved -- in fact, clumps usually die out after a couple years. But they do self-seed in good soil with sun and not too much competition. Purple milkweed is like an improved version of syriaca (for garden purposes): smaller, with more colorful blooms, and less aggressive. It competes well with other tall plants (but not too well) and it does seem to spread underground to a small extent. Seems to be long-lived, too. I like them all, as do the monarchs and other butterflies. I think they can all have a place in a garden setting, but syrriaca is by far the most challenging.