Thank you to Mary Farmer, aka miconia@Flickr for sharing today's image (original image | BPotD Flickr Group Pool). Mary's written a fine accompaniment to her photograph: The Tropical Milkweed, on her weblog, A Neotropical Savanna.
I'll add a bit more text and a few more resources to what Mary has written. The native distribution of blood flower or Mexican butterfly weed is not known. Wyatt and Broyles, in the June, 1997 paper, “The Weedy Tropical Milkweeds Asclepias curassavica and A. fruticosa are Self-Compatible” (Biotropica, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 232-234) cite a 1954 reference (Woodson) that conjectures South America as the native range for this species, but allows that Central America, the Antilles or Mexico are also possibilities. The modern day extent of the species covers much of the subtropics and tropics of both the Old World and New World. Despite an unknown native origin, its name reflects the place where the first specimens were likely collected, Curaçao.
In temperate-region gardens and homes of the world, it is suggested as both an excellent annual planting (Kemper Center for Home Gardening Plant of Merit) or greenhouse plant (Cal's Plant of the Week).
CalPhotos has more photographs of Asclepias curassavica.
In other news, the garden's online photo store is now open. I've started it with ten photographs from the garden and will add more garden photographs on a fairly regular schedule – I just need to determine what that schedule might be!
Gorgeous picture, as usual.
The store is a great idea, but only 1 Megapixel for the digital downloads?? That won't work for printing.
The intent with the 1 megapixel digital downloads is for folks who would like a higher-quality wallpaper. Those images would work out to roughly twice the area as images presented on BPotD, so would be an improvement over what's already available.
I originally intended to offer the larger 4 megapixel downloads (and the even larger original size), but I've no clue what a fair price is for something like that. I need to review what other photographers offer before unlocking those.
Chris, the point of limiting digital downloads to 1Megapixel is that they can't be printed at any reasonable size. Unfortunately, there are too many people who are happy to pass someone elses work off as their own.
Asclepias curassavica - Z9 - RHS Index of Garden Plants, Griffiths
Asclepias curassavica - minimum 7 degrees C/45 degrees F - A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, Brickell, Cole, Zuk
Asclepias curassavica - Z9-11 - Kemper Center for Home Gardening
To Mary's excellent comments, I would add the following: this common milkweed has naturalized readily in the Louisiana Gulf Coast.
In addition to planting as a 'trap plant' for aphids, it is also used as forage for the Monarch butterfly, as Mary has noted; the chemicals in the latex sap of the plant make the caterpillar poisonous to birds, thus ensuring the future of the butterfly.
How coincidental - I had never heard of this particular species. After my typical early morning review of BPotD, I went to my usual Thursday volunteer day at Green Spring Gardens, a local botanical park here in Virginia. There they were sowing seed of this very plant to sell in their fundraising garden shop, because "it always sells well" and encourages the Monarch butterfly, as Nancy Anne points out. Daniel once again makes a timely contribution to my botanical education!
Hi Daniel: You've included my favourite picture in the abstract section of your store. Thanks.
Good luck with the store. I hope it raises a lot of money for UBC projects.
As always, my day brightens with your site.
Colleen
I've seen this plant growing in Costa Rica in the north near Nicaragua. I also have a picture of an orchid that seems to mimic this plant (or others like it). The orchid was yellow in the centre and turned orange/red at the edges.
I was curious about the name and its connection with mythology, and found this in wikipedia, in the entry for the genus 'Asclepius':
"Carolus Linnaeus named the genus after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, because of the many folk-medicinal uses for the milkweed plants."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepias
Love the butterfly weed, and yes it is a magnate to the Monarch. It does attract millions of a yellow aphid which engulf the plant. How does one rid the plant from this aphid looking pestilence. Moccoettes@aol.com for the answer please! Or Mocbug57@yahoo.com