Living in the Dunes
In partnership with
NORTH CHAPTER
Milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) of Northwest indiana
Milkweeds were in their own family until recently they were moved into the dogbane family (Apocynaceae). When closely observed, milkweeds have one of the showiest little flowers with a hood and horns distinguishing it from many plants. Milkweeds have a really cool sexual feature called a gynostegium or column. It is a reproductive structure that has their boy parts (stamens) and girl parts (stigma and style) fused together in the center of the flower. This phenomenon is also seen in orchids. There are ten different milkweed species that are native to the Indiana Dunes.
If you would like to learn more about milkweeds and pollinators, check out The Xerces Society and Monarch Watch.
For more on milkweed flower morphology, click here.
Pod of the Milkweed by Robert Frost
Calling all butterflies from every race
From source unknown but no special place
They ever will return to all their lives,
Because unlike the bees they have no hives
The milkweed brings up to my very door
The theme of wanton waste in peace and war
As it has never been to me before.
And so it seems a flower’s coming out
That should if not be talked then sung about.
The countless wings that from the infinite
Make such a noiseless tumult over it
Do no doubt with their color compensate
For what the drab weed lacks of the ornate.
For drab it is its fondest must admit.
And yes, although it is a flower that flows
With milk and honey, it is bitter milk,
As anyone who ever broke its stem
And dared to taste the wound a little knows.
It tastes as if it might be opiate.
But whatsoever else it may secrete,
Its flowers distilled honey is so sweet
It makes the butterflies intemperate.
There is no slumber in its juice for them
One knocks another off from where he clings.
They knock the dyestuff off each other’s wings—
With thirst on hunger to the point of lust.
They raise in their intemperance a cloud
Of mingled butterfly and flower dust
That hangs perceptibly above the scene.
In being sweet to these ephemerals
The sober weed has managed to contrive
In our three hundred days and sixty-five
One day too sweet for beings to survive.
Many shall come away as struggle-worn
And spent and dusted off of their regalia,
To which at daybreak they were freshly born,
As after one-of-them’s proverbial failure
From having beaten all day long in vain
Against the wrong side of a windowpane.
But waste was of the essence of the scheme.
And all the good they did for man or god
To all those flowers they passionately trod
Was leave as their posterity one pod
With an inheritance of restless dream.
He hangs on upside down with talon feet
In an inquisitive position odd
As any Guatemalan parakeet.
Something eludes him.
Is it food to eat?
Or some dim secret of the good of waste?
He almost has it in his talon clutch.
Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone
That science may have staked the future on?
He seems to say the reason why so much
Should come to nothing must be fairly faced.