100 Species Challenge -- Species #11

Specimen #11

Swamp Milkweed

Asclepias incarnata

Picture taken in Delavan, Wisconsin, 2008 near GCM3XQ What's the point?

Shortened from the NPWRC website -- note the last item about being edible:

• Field Marks: This is the only wetland milkweed with lanceolate opposite leaves, pink or pinkish red hour-glass-shaped flowers, and milky sap.
• Habitat: Swamps, wet ditches, wet prairies, streambanks, marshes.
• Stems: Erect, branched, smooth, rarely hairy, with milky sap, up to 5 feet tall.
• Leaves: Opposite, simple, lanceolate to oblanceolate, pointed at the tip, narrowed or rounded at the base, without teeth, smooth or hairy on the lower surface, with milky sap, up to 4 inches long, up to 1 inch wide, with short stalks.
• Flowers: Several borne in umbels, pink to pinkish red, hour-glass-shaped, up to 1/3 inch long, borne on smooth stalks.
• Notes: The leaves, when gathered young, can be cooked and eaten as a vegetable. The roots are eaten by muskrats.