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Asclepias
Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2022 3:57 pm
by Matsukaze
Does anyone have any experience of these as butterfly plants in a southern English context? I'm well aware that my chances of attracting Monarchs are virtually non-existent, but I'm wondering whether our native butterflies would take to them as a source of nectar.
Re: Asclepias
Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2022 6:47 pm
by David M
After seeing how attractive they were to insects in Spain last October I decided to buy three
asclepia curassavica plants, Chris:
https://www.hotplantco.co.uk/9769/Ascle ... ood-Flower
They arrived promptly and have positively thrived inside my living room next to the patio doors. I will probably plant them outside at the end of April and see how they get on, although they'll have to be taken back inside before the cold weather arrives in autumn.
Re: Asclepias
Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2022 4:06 pm
by Matsukaze
I have spread my bets with seeds from three species, curassavica, incarnata (swamp milkweed) and tuberosa (butterfly weed). I doubt curassavica will survive a worse-than-average winter here, and our porch is already full to the limits of my wife's tolerance with citrus and pelargoniums; the other two should have no trouble with frost, being used to far colder conditions in much of their native range.
Re: Asclepias
Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:10 pm
by David M
Let me know how you get on with the non-curassavica ones, Chris. I rather suspect that I may have to go for a more temperate species as
curassavica likes semi-tropical conditions which are in pretty short supply in Swansea.
Re: Asclepias
Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2022 9:33 pm
by PaynterQ
In NZ, where I live, the monarch is a self-introduced species (arriving once people started growing host plants in their gardens). The most common foodplant is Gomphocarpus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomphocarpus_physocarpus, which is fairly frost hardy. NZ is hardly a butterfly hot spot, so I'm not sure how attractive the flowers are to butterflies in general but monarch butterflies do use the flowers. I've also seen native yellow admiral butterflies using them (so I suspect red admirals etc. might go for them). The only other butterflies that we regularly get in the garden are long-tailed blues, "common blues" (Zizina otis) and introduced small white butterflies, which ignore them
Re: Asclepias
Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2022 11:09 am
by David M
I'm pretty sure that's the first Yellow Admiral image on this forum - beautiful insect.
Thanks for posting that, PaynterQ, as well as the other comments.
Re: Asclepias
Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2022 12:20 pm
by Matsukaze
The seeds have germinated! Not sure whether the hardy perennials will flower this year though. The packaging for one of them promises big things - the large fritillary nectaring away would be excellent (SWF visits occasionally) but the black swallowtails are perhaps a bit much to hope for...
Re: Asclepias
Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2023 5:42 pm
by Matsukaze
A. curassavica couldn't grow quickly enough to cope with even the unusually good summer of 2022 here, failing to flower before autumn kicked in, and (hardly unexpectedly) died off over winter. The other two have at least proved hardy but are very vulnerable to slugs, and have taken considerable losses. Hopefully next summer I'll have a better idea of their attractiveness to butterflies.
Re: Asclepias
Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2023 7:37 pm
by David M
Have to say that without a supply of tropical conditions, curassavica struggles. Mine petered out last year before I could even consider putting them outside.