Ok, you're right; I don't think it was red. The swamp milkweed pix all look right, and the one at Dave's Garden with the seed pods is exactly it. Thanks! Show & Tell time: Thank you, Sherrie; this was pure luck that this bed turned out the way it did; I somehow ended up tossing all my 'vigorous, comma, things that are pink" into this bed, and it worked. I'm constantly trying to figure out what to plant in the 'back' of this bed, as the whole thing is on a slope and surrounds a flagpole, and I like to put annuals on the other side of it. Here's some shots of the area. I dug it all out in 2006, and expanded it in 2007: Feb 4, 2006- this part of the bed is planted in the composted area. The sandy area around the flagpole was composted over in spring of 2007...(I don't think I planted it out in 06) and that's where I plant the shorter annuals: 2007 saw a major expansion of the whole area out around that shrub on the right, and another shrub on the left. Here's a shot from the roof: By July 28 of '07 it wasn't looking too shabby! 2008 was a 'weedy-out-of-control' gardening season for me, and I was not thrilled with the 'jungle' look of my gardens last year. Mostly because I didn't take the time & effort to tend to them like they should have been, and I got this 'jungle' from my livingroom window. Plus, I went "sunflower crazy" and they towered over everything in the yard, making everything just too darned overgrown looking. the B&Bs were happy, but I'm going to shorten things up a bit this year:

Thanks for that website, Liljagster! Geni, I've had both good luck and zero luck with A. incarnata. The A. verticillata and A. viridis seeds I mentioned planting on this thread on Sept. 19th have only yielded two sprouts, a couple of days ago. They were both Asclepias verticillata. I'll just leave the flats of seeds through the winter and water them well in the spring. As for the A. verticillata, I stratified it in my refrigerator in water the first time I sowed them and that time I had good success. I got the following instructions from another forum (it's the Yahoo group growingnative) Here's what Rufino Osorio wrote a year or two ago when asked about Asclepias perennis seeds: "I left the seeds in the refrigerator about 3.5 weeks and replaced the water about once a week with fresh cold water. This method has proven quite effective at breaking the dormancy of a very wide variety of Asclepias species." I haven't found the original post, but he had already explained that he was letting the seeds soak entirely in water for the 3.5 week treatment. He said 4 weeks was equally successful, too, so 3.5 isn't a magic number.

Thanks Mark, I feel a lot more hopeful now. And that's great that it's a repeat bloomer. I've been planting a few native grasses that skippers use as host plants. Some are 3 or 4 ft. tall. I think I've got enough tall ones. debarron, is it wetter in eastern Oklahoma like it is in eastern Texas? Is that the area you live in. For some reason I was thinking you lived in a dry place with sagebrushes growing near your house. Wish I could send you my Blue Flag Iris. She's not getting enough sun and moisture up here. I don't have any low spots that collect rain anywhere. Are you able to grow Bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes where you are? I'm so happy I was once in Texas when all those wildflowers were blooming. It puts Illinois to shame. Teasle and Poison Hemlock seem to be our most abundant roadside wildflowers. They have been spraying the Teasle (not very thuroughly) and leaving the Hemlock, which in time might overtake the teasle because it's taller. There are an awful lot of common milkweeds all over the place. And a few small colonies of A. sullivantii, but here you never see tuberosa or incarnata growing in the wild, only in gardens. All the other species that are supposed to be native to this area I've never seen. William, I was just reading that kn annual zones Calotropis gigantea grows faster than C. procera. I would like a really tall tree type plant so I'm planning on growing both. One for the size, and the other for its fragrance. Germination can be as long as 3 or 4 months, so I"m going to start the process 6 months before planting outdoors, because nice sized plants will give me a better chance of them getting tree-like.

Ice Ballet has been around a long time. I had a plant years ago and it did great, until it got tugged out. Maybe yours are having a harder than normal time adjusting. I was planning on having more this year, but the seeds that were winter sowed never germinated. Seems like A. incarnatas are more finicky and problematic than any of the other native milkweeds. I'm trying out a new incarnata variation for next year. Asclepias incarnata var. pulchra. It's beautiful and it has more cardioglycoids than regular incarnata, so it probably won't be ruined by the aphids like straight species incarnatas.