Thanks for the report, Randy. I noticed my Swamp mw up, but the A. viridis and A. asperula are just nubs at the surface. Mine is a lil slower than yours. I do have overwintered trop. mw putting on new leaves, for them to lay their eggs on. One of my "Hairy Balls" that I overwintered in the garage made it, and is putting on new leaves!!! The smaller one, bit the dirt.

Hi Steve et al, (is that right by the way, or did I just pull that out of a hat?) I had no idea that I was bringing up the question at all in my remark about A. tuberosa. I was only mentioning that I heard that A. tuberosa was not as toxic as some of the other popular milkweeds and that I had never been able to get it to grow anyway so I gave up on it years ago. I wondered whether you had it growing yourself or whether you might have been confusing it with curassavica which I have all over the place. But the question you raise is interesting though I have no knowledge of the subject and never thought about it until you mentioned it above. At this point I wouldn't lose any sleep over it at all since it seems to be used by so many people successfully with monarchs for years. But monarchs are not as easy to rear for me and I think they are susceptible to so many forms of predation that I often leave them outside when I find them because I hate to see things die. But if there is truth to the allegations about native vs. non-native I would definitely like to know. I grow two species of native milkweed but to be honest with you they are a real pain because they appear too late for the spring migration and often go dormant before the fall migration. So what good is that. So I just have at least five or so species and let the adult butterflies pick out their own choice. They definitely choose the physocarpa and curassavica over any of the others. As far as the notion that A. tuberosa might be invasive out here in CA, I seriously doubt it because tuberosa likes rich and well-drained soil and the only place you would find that out here is in bags at the local nursery and it's quite expensive. I doubt most tuberosas could afford it. On top of that tuberosa does not do well in pots or so the mail order catalog indicates. At least it never worked for me.

Here's information about root cuttings. You are in luck as fall is the proper time to do this. Here is a link that might be useful: Asclepias tuberosa root cuttings

Michael—I started out with the tropical variety (A. currassavica—didn't know any better then about planting native varieties) and had great success with transplanting the seedlings (seeds from the original plants) when they were quite young. My problem is that they don't seem to grow very rapidly. I've gotten some seeds for a native variety and hope I will have better luck with them. I haven't found anywhere locally where I can buy potted native milkweed plants, but I am going to call a FL native nursery a little south of where I am to see if they have any.