Milkweed Butterfly Bush. These handsome native plants will attract lots of monarch butterflies to your garden although a single plant produces many flowers and makes a colorful show all by itself several clumps of milkweed here and there in the garden are even. Asclepias tuberosa the butterfly weed is a species of milkweed native to eastern and southwestern north america.
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If you do have a butterfly bush be sure to add native host plants such as milkweed aster and dill if you want the butterflies to stay. It is commonly known as butterfly weed because of the butterflies that are attracted to the plant by its color and its copious production of nectar it is also a larval food plant of the queen and monarch butterflies as well as the dogbane tiger moth milkweed tussock moth and. The species name tuberose refers to the tuberous knobby and with swellings roots.
The genus name asclepias is named after the greek god of medicine asklepios.
There aren t too many flowers that exhibit this pretty blue hue and no other milkweed does. Common milkweed asclepias syriaca is a native herbaceous perennial whose main virtue is its appeal to butterflies especially the monarch which deposits its eggs on the milkweed when the caterpillars hatch they feed on the leaves of milkweed. A professional landscaper told me that although they love this bush it is unhealthy for them. Milkweed is a lovely wildflower and the sole host plant for monarch butterfly caterpillars.
