For many years now, I have wondered why milkweed does not expand and thrive in my wild yard. This spring I happily spotted the four customary Common Milkweed plants, in all 3 acres of land, and that is about it. I have done my pastoral duty in the past, by seeding and planting all kinds of milkweeds, they sprouted and bloomed for a year or two, hosted monarch butterflies and caterpillars, aphids, beetles and more, but they did not return. Some unknowns prevent them from staying… yet they continue to thrive alongside many of the greener road ditches, nearby…
Why and what am I doing wrong? Asks the gardener, caretaker, horticultural creature in me? So, last fall I decided to experiment once again, with purchased seeds, and promptly forgot to prepare them for planting. Milkweed seed germination benefits from a period of cold stratification, a fancy word for a time of winter cold, a quiet down in hibernation. Winter is gone and my common milkweed seeds ended up in the fridge, lightly pressed against a few inches of moist soil, covered by a wet paper towel and a plastic cover, inside one of those annoying non-recyclable vegetable containers, finally serving a useful purpose. Three weeks in April was all I could stand and out they came. Within a few days, with the morning kitchen sun and my delight, I would guess 100% germination rate, now carefully moved to peat pots... waiting for the rains to stop and my decision to plant them somewhere, where fate may help them thrive. My guide in this adventure is Graig Holdrege and his fine article about “The story of an organism – common milkweed”, from a few years ago. Even if you are not a university-trained botanist, and I am not one, read it, if you are interested in a holistic approach to plants. He calls it a Goethean approach, and I am sure my mother would have approved of his thinking. The question to ask is not why, but how? Observe, then draw parallel lines, if possible, to renew a view of your own perspectives and the perspectives of those around you. He says: “I want to see how milkweed is formed, how its parts relate to each other, and how it relates to its environment.”
Each patch of milkweed can be seen as a colony, a tribe, a rhizomatic structure of possible virtual sameness. The flowers are magnificent creations and according to Graig Holdrege, they “drew us all into its world of refined structures.”
The flowers bring me back to the complicated world of transformation, of becoming and never quite ever arriving… Not being the same and yet continuously recognizing yourself as the same as other, or as before…
And then enters Pollinia, the killer, in center stage!
“Unlike the pollen in most flowers, which is released from the anthers while they are still attached to the flower, in milkweeds the pollen remains contained within the pollinia until it comes in contact with the stigma of a flower. Only orchids — also plants with complex flowers — package their pollen in a similar way.”
And community: “The only way for the pollinia to escape their chambers is via insects. As already mentioned, milkweed flowers are visited by a multitude of insects that are in search of nectar — which they find in generous supply. Not only is the nectar very rich in sugar content, being up to 3% sucrose, but the supply is also renewed over the life of the individual flower (Southwick, 1983; Wyatt, Broyles, & Derda, 1992). Milkweed flowers produce much more nectar than the many insects feeding on it could ever remove.” I have released more than one bumble bee and at least one moth from their grabbing jaws. If you click on this video, and pay attention to the bottom left screen, you might catch a brief glimpse of the ants removing another dead moth, dead by pollinia! Each flower pod has plenty of seeds, but they do not germinate easily, in the wild. “…researchers discovered that common milkweed is self-incompatible (reviewed in Wyatt & Broyles, 1994). This means that the pollinium from a flower that is inserted into a flower of the same colony will normally not bear fruit.”
So I pause here for the beauty intrinsic in the seeds, empowered with fuzz that allows them to be driven by the winds! I admire the plant even more – a world of migrations and possibilities, reminding me of oaks in their generous offerings to all kinds of insects, butterflies, beetles, aphids and humans alike. “Observing nectar feeders on common milkweed, Southwick (1983) identified representatives from 15 different orders of insects (and one hummingbird species).” ...There are at least 10 species of insects that feed only on common milkweed or other closely related milkweeds in the genus Asclepias (Agrawal, 2005; Price & Wilson, 1979; see Table 1 and Figure 11 A-G)." Holdrege brings out another interesting point – the plant attracts many predators and lives in somewhat balanced equilibrium with them… The white sap exuded is quite poisonous to many, yet it can also be the solution, the mixture for cure. In Brasil, the plant is recognized and harvested widely, in the countryside and in cities, for its known healing powers. Humans then tend to cease to see caterpillars or monarch butterflies and only see noxious bugs and good healing plants...
“So milkweed is helping those insects that prey on it become better protected from their own predators. This is, in a sense, a paradoxical situation in which a plant is providing protection for its predators, which increases the likelihood that there will be more predators to feed on it (Malcolm 1995). Theoretically, one could think that these specialists might eradicate milkweed. But neither the scientific literature nor my own observations indicate that milkweed populations are significantly harmed by the specialist herbivores associated with them. “
In my view, this is a crucial point for the drawing of a framework and for musings about being - where do we start, where do we end? “When we reflect on such relationships between two kinds of organisms, a plant and an animal, the boundary between the two begins to dissolve. We can no longer think of the plant without the animal or the animal without the plant. Normally we think of the plant and the animal that feeds on it as two separate organisms that interact. It is challenging, in fact, not to describe them in such terms. But we can ask the question, “Where do organisms end?” (Holdrege, 2000).” Composting gives me some hints. I do not know why, but there is a magic moment when the volatile remnants from live food, fallen leaves, stems, debris become golden soil. Life and death are combined in foul earthy decaying stench and in sweet dirt. Sometimes dubious pleasures and pain of virus, injury, death and birth reunited in life. The Life of Plants, a Metaphysics of Mixture, by Emmanuelle Coccia and one of my bedside table reading texts, the mixture, the breath we take of the world brings me to a similar place: “We do not inhabit the Earth, we inhabit the air through the atmosphere. We are immersed in it exactly as the fish is immersed in the sea. And what we call breathing is nothing but the agriculture of the atmosphere. “p 61 Give me a break, Milkweed! I am no longer inclined to be your pastoral caretaker! I am just an ephemeral resident, discovering tactical knowledges, mysterious feelings, and adjustments, just like, I am sure, you are too… And this is the most powerful intake of real I have had in a while, and a great gift.
In the mythologies of the “West”, milkweed was given the Latin name of Asclepias, after Asclepius, frequently portrayed as a muscular male god with the medical powers of cure and a serpent of knowledge wrapped around his staff to prove it! I much rather equate milkweed with softer images and the tactical powers of adaptation and dispersal...
This week, the first monarch of the season wanders across the yard, nectaring on the fragrant and sickly-sweet bloom of autumn olives. One plant left unattended (as an euphemism for killed, by me, with strong poison) and this year, the olives have taken over, once again… Playing the role of caretaker for the environment outside requires quite a bit of thought and lots of material wealth!! I rather stay with the simpler, enticing questions with no definite answers…from inside, for now. Meanwhile, monarch butterflies, that up to now have searched for milkweed as the only host plant where they lay eggs, and where their caterpillars can survive, well, monarchs have acquired their own aura of myth for us. Something like, if we save them, we are saving ourselves... Are we? Just to make sure, I am enjoying the planting of milkweed seedlings this week...
Milkweed
A beautiful piece and of course I loved the "Give me a break Milkweed!"