Hee Hee, Tracey - neither can I. But, I don't have a lot of room indoors, which is why I winter sow. All of my milkweeds I winter sowed are up. But, they were winter sown because they needed cold stratification in order to germinate. If you have species other than A. curassavica (which is a tropical annual in PA), it may take awhile yet for them to pop up. If they don't begin to show in another couple of weeks or a month, I would refrigerate them to give them some cold treatment, for at least a month. Tracey, mine were up last month in early March. I think you're right about them being early this year. Susan

This year I wintersowed and got good germination on all of these: A. incarnata 'Ice Ballet' A. variegata A. purpurascens A. speciosa A. exaltata A. curassavica The fastest growing perennial seedlings are the A. incarnata. Next is the A. purpurascens. The rest are growing more slowly. The tropical milkweed is just sprouting, and likely will grow to the largest size in one season. If I had more sun, they would probably do better. My older Asclepias has been suffering the past couple years though - lots of wilt and root dieback. The A. incarnata plants are barely hanging on. Some stalks on the large A. tuberosas are dying back. I think I lost a 2 year old A. variegata plant this winter. 3rd year A. purpurascens and 2nd year A. verticillata plants are doing well, but they are all pretty small. The wild A. syriaca was hit with a wilt last year, but seems to be doing okay this year, so far. Last year, it didn't seem to matter that the Asclepias did terribly, because there were hardly any Monarchs anyway. I didn't collect any eggs last year. Hopefully, this year there will be both Monarch eggs and plenty of Milkweed!

Thank you!! I'm a little distressed: after all of the hot water changes, etc., and then to lose precious milkweed seeds to mold/mildew/fungus or whatever it is! I planted so much for the library butterfly garden, and I'll be sad if I don't have any asclepias to put in there.

Bernergrrl, To the contrary, I don't think you were sounding critical and I agree with your idea 100%. In fact, I was just going to say the same thing. I think it would be much better to share locally if possible. I was hoping to share seedlings with my neighbors, two of whom were quite smitten with my butterfly raising last year, but I didn't have enough to share. I don't expect other people to raise butterflies, but simply planting some flowers for them and some host plants would be a big help. If we collect wild seeds, the plants will be truly native and well adapted here, and if we share them locally it will help the neighbors, the butterflies, and ourselves. A win-win all around. Around here things are so built up it is not that easy to find native flowering plants. We do have milkweed of various types, though. Last summer I also found some mountain mint which was swarming with bees and butterflies when it flowered. I gathered some seed and planted it and it is doing beautifully. I love that minty smell! Also some wild chelone, but I understand that is difficult to grow from seed. My local park planted a little wild patch for the butterflies with ironweed, milkweed, black-eyed Susan, thistle, and helenium. I saw a pretty good variety of butterflies there last summer, including monarchs, black and tiger swallowtails, lots and lots of clouded and orange sulfurs, and the occasional viceroy or buckeye. There were also lots of pearl crescents in that park in various places throughout the summer. However, I doubt that these plants are truly wild. I think the parks department probably bought seed to plant this area. However, you can say that the plants were well adapted here since they were thriving.