| Asclepias californica California Milkweed |
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|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| (unranked): | Angiosperms |
| (unranked): | Eudicots |
| (unranked): | Asterids |
| Order: | Gentianales |
| Family: | Apocynaceae |
| Subfamily: | Asclepiadoideae |
| Genus: | Asclepias |
| Species: | A. californica |
| Binomial name | |
| Asclepias californica Greene |
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Asclepias californica is a species of milkweed known by the common name California milkweed. It grows throughout lower northern, central and southern California.
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Asclepias californica is native to California and northern Baja California. It is a flowering perennial with thick, white, woolly stems which bend or run along the ground. The plentiful, hanging flowers are rounded structures with reflexed corollas and starlike arrays of bulbous anthers.
The flowers are dull to bright shades of lavender or pink.
This plant was eaten as candy by the Kawaiisu tribes of indigenous California; the milky sap within the leaves is flavorful and chewy when cooked.
Asclepias californica is an important and specific Monarch butterfly food plant in nectar and vegetation, and cocoon habitat plant. The alkaloids they ingest from the plant are retained in the butterfly, making it unpalatable to predators.[1]