Southern Milkweed (Asclepias viridula)

Asclepias viridula pictured blooming in June and mature seeds in July. Photo Credit: Kelly Coles & Willow Mar

Global Rank: G2 - Imperiled
Legal Status: N/A
Family: Apocynaceae
State: AL, FL
Nature Serve ID: 154257
Lifeform: Forb/herb
Date Inducted in National Collection: 11/18/2024

Description:

Where is Southern Milkweed (Asclepias viridula) located in the wild?

States & Provinces:

Southern Milkweed can be found in Alabama, Florida

Which CPC Partners conserve Southern Milkweed (Asclepias viridula)?

Atlanta Botanical Garden

Not Sponsored

Conservation Actions

Assigned 11/20/24

CPC's Plant Sponsorship Program provides long term stewardship of rare plants in our National Collection. We are so grateful for all our donors who have made the Plant Sponsorship Program so successful. We are in the process of acknowledging all our wonderful plant sponsorship donors on our website. This is a work in progress and will be updated regularly.

Conservation Actions

Kelly Coles

11/18/2024

The Atlanta Botanical Garden Gulf Coast conservation field team monitored and collected seeds from a large population of Asclepias viridula at the St. Joseph Bay State Buffer Preserve during May - July 2024. This wet prairie population consisted of 97 individuals blooming after a recent burn. This species requires burning for flowering to occur, and this population had been visited in 2023 with no flowers found. In 2024, individuals were widely spread across the habitat, occurring primarily as single individuals or in very loose clumps. During monitoring, it was noted that an unknown creature had munched off the tops of at least 60% of observed flowering plants. In some cases, the flowering head was completely gone, and in others, heads were snapped but not completely removed. Because of these high herbivory rates, all remaining flowers and/or developing pods were bagged to protect plants from herbivory.

Green pods turn brown once mature. At maturity, pods are completely open or beginning to split at the seam, releasing multiple seeds. The average number of seeds per pod was 19, and most individuals only produced 1 pod. Only 10% of seeds from reproductive individuals were collected for seebanking; the rest of the bagged seeds were returned to the environment. In total, 212 seeds from 11 maternal lines were collected.