Asclepias speciosa - photos and description
Saskatchewan's Wildflowers
Big plants often forming large colonies. Flowers pink and white, fragrant, in globose umbels. Umbel measured at 7 cm across, and a single flower measured at 2.5 cm in diameter. Leaves large, opposite, broadly lanceolate to ovate with short petioles, typical leaf measured at 14 cm long and 7.5 cm wide. Stems and bottom of leaves pubescent, top of leaves with short hairs. Stems and leaves when broken exude a milky white sap.
Height listed in Budd's Flora to 100 cm. We measured plants to 91 cm tall.
Habitat is moist grassland and roadsides. Common.
Took the above photos July 28th, roadside in the Qu' Appelle Valley 140 km north east of our home in Regina, SK. Normally these plants flower earlier in July, I photographed plants that had been mowed in the spring and were, therefore, late to bloom.
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