Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: New Butterfly weed (Milkweed) seedlings, 0 by pennefeather

pennefeather wrote:
I am starting two butterfly weeds from seed: asclepsia tuberosa, and asclepsia curassavica. I know that one is supposed to be a perennial, and one is an annual, but I can't remember which is which right now. At any rate, I was wondering if the perennial would still attract butterflies if it doesn't bloom this year. I am assuming that I wont see any blooms on the perennial.

Last year was my first year with butterfly weed, and I can't remember what happened when they bloomed, if they bloomed. I know that the leaves were stripped off. I think that I picked up alclepsia tuberosa, and incarnata last year from the nursery. I know incarnata is a perennial so I should expect to see that this spring.

Based upon the little that I remember, I am also wondering if I should plant them in more than one location? I seem to remember seeing the plants being reduced to just a stick by the catepillars. Of course, last year, I only had four plants. This year I should have almost of dozen of each of the tuberosa and curassavica.

I don't have a single picture of the butterfly weed when I checked all of my garden pictures. Probably because they didn't have any butterflies on them. Lot of them on the echinacea though.

This message was edited Mar 11, 2008 10:28 PM