Butterfly weed, Asclepias tuberosa, is the fiery orange relative of common milkweed. While milkweed sprouts enthusiastically from every nook and cranny, butterfly weed can be reluctant to germinate at all. It can also be demanding about its site and growing habits. Midsummer is a good time to sprout this seed, because the plant often takes a full season of growth before it flowers.
What a payoff it gives!. Here in the northeast, butterfly weed is a joyous bloomer during summer with its deliciously dense oranges often deepening to red. Even after bloom, it draws Monarch butterflies, which feed on the leaves.
First things first: How do you persuade the seeds to germinate? All seeds have their unique germination requirements. Yes, marigold seeds often have 100% germination 100% of the time, but they're an exception. Seed packets try to describe the best way to germinate the seeds inside, but sometimes the instructions don't work. My own detailed books on starting seeds claim butterfly weed is, in fact, "easy" from seed. That wasn't my experience.
My first attempt at butterfly weed taught me an important lesson in seed germination. I put the seeds in a good medium, pressed them in, covered them very lightly, left the tray in a warm, sunny area, and kept them moist. Nothing happened—for weeks. I almost threw them out, but instead, in irritation, put the seed trays outdoors to deal with later. Lo! Within a few days almost all the seeds had sprouted.
Here's what I learned: some seeds need a germination environment that replicates their experience in the wild. My Asclepias seeds obviously needed a period of cold—possibly a period of alternating cold and warmth—in order to germinate. This may not be true for every Asclepias tuberosa seed, but it was true for my seeds.
After a little research I found that in order to germinate, seeds of perennials can require a sustained period of cold, or alternating cold and warmth, or alternating light and dark, or no light at all, or lots of light. Some don't care at all about light and darkness, but will only germinate when pressed very firmly into soil. I learned that last trick soon after I saw my cat walk across a tray of un-germinated alyssum seed. I was irate until a few days later I saw the lustiest germination occurring within the cat prints.
Back to the butterfly weed. After those first butterfly weed seeds germinated, I placed the plants in my front garden, which has a hot, windy, southwest exposure and sandy soil. Today butterfly weed dominates that garden, and germinates enthusiastically, yet selectively. Seeds sprout best from areas near pavement at the sides of the driveway, and in the sunniest, rockiest areas. The one place they don't germinate is within the dappled, grassy shade beneath the cherry tree. That's where my globe thistle (echinops) likes to germinate—and so freely that I have to keep pulling them up. Echinops has never germinated in the sandy, sunny, perpetually disturbed soil favored by butterfly weed. I've take the hint from my plants, and let their preferences design my garden
A few years back I gifted a few seedlings to a friend, who placed them in a sheltered windless spot with rich soil and half-day sun. The plants faded the first year and didn't come back the second. Lesson: butterfly weed develops vigor when it is exposed to hot afternoon sun. Give it moisture, but give it sun.
Another thing: butterfly weed doesn't like too much competition. My blanket flowers (gaillardia grandiflora) like the same dry, sunny habitat as butterfly weed, but a good-sized gaillardia within five inches of one butterfly weed killed it within a month. This inability to compete may explain why we don't often see butterfly weed in the wild, as often as we see milkweed.
Finally, once your butterfly weed is growing don't try to move it. It has a very long taproot; if broken, the plant dies.
Here's a summary of advice:
* Follow instructions for germinating butterfly weed on the seed packet—then allow the seed alternating periods of cold and warmth. Freezing temperatures probably won't hurt the seed, but the daytime temperatures need to get good and warm. Put the seeds outside during the night, or in the refrigerator, then into a sunny window during the day. Be patient.
* When planting butterfly weed outdoors, the soil should not be too rich or too wet or too dry. The spot should be hot and sunny, without competition from too many plants. (Exceptions exist. An established butterfly weed in my garden is growing from the middle of a carpet juniper. Go figure.)
* Rocks and stones are a good thing. Their ability to modulate soil temperature and hold moisture never hurt any plant.
Where to get seed: You might not be able to find butterfly weed seed at your local grocery store or nursery, but it is widely available through mail order. Use a good search engine to locate a source. Park Seed (parkseed.com) and Burpee (burpeee.com) are good, reliable sources. Another is Whatcom Seed Company (seedrack.com). Smaller nurseries often carry unusual varieties of Asclepias. Prairie Moon Nursery in Minnesota carries a dozen varieties of Asclepias seed, along with good information on its cultivation and its value as a native species. Other sources: (prairiemoon.com) and Swallowtail Garden Seeds in California (swallowtailseeds.com).
Police in Texas just made a remarkable discovery that could potentially turn the domestic marijuana industry upside down. Although a recent drug raid only turned up a single marijuana plant, officers determined that it is the most valuable marijuana ever reported. According to Sheriff Thomas Kerss, this type of marijuana has a street value of $6,000 per ounce!
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That's some very impressive pot. According to the government's own data, collected by the National Drug Intelligence Center, high-grade marijuana prices top out at around $7,500 per pound in high-value markets. That's around $470 an ounce. Similarly, the marijuana magazine High Times estimates the average price of high-grade marijuana at $428 per ounce in August 2009.
As you can see, the marijuana just discovered in Texas is more than 12 times as valuable as anything currently on the market. Even the hippies at High Times have never heard of anything like this, but maybe that's because the police are doing such a good job keeping it off the streets.
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Or maybe the police lied about how much it's worth. After finding only one little pot plant in a big dramatic drug raid, they wildly inflated the value of their drug seizure in order to make newspaper headlines. It's happened before, although this is by far the most laughably outrageous marijuana price ever claimed by police in the three years I've been documenting this behavior.
At $6,000 an ounce, that would mean one little joint costs $200. A dimebag would be invisible to the naked eye. It just doesn’t make sense, which is why I refuse to believe it's an honest mistake when cops say stuff like this. Narcotics investigators buy drugs all the time so they can arrest people for selling to them. They know the market well and if their estimates come out all crazy, it's because they're trying to impress people with the fruits of their filthy labor.
But the stupidity doesn’t end there. Lying about the value of marijuana rather obviously encourages people to grow it. If these guys really gave a heck about "winning" the war on drugs, they wouldn’t be running around in the middle of an economic crisis telling people you can make thousands of dollars from a single marijuana plant. Nonsense like that could quickly blow up in your face.
Unless, of course, the people who get paid a good salary and benefits to bust marijuana growers actually want more people to do it. Say it ain't so.
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