terrene, I found a lot of information on line. There seems to be a bit of conflicting information regarding common names and growth zones so I'm not certain if there are two plants that can be confused with each other or what. It is a new to me plant, too. I ordered seeds from an on line vendor and I think I have what will be a smallish tree shrub type plant. I have two growing and they're doing very well for me. If the butterflies like it, I'll try more next year if I can find space to grow them. One of the things that attracted me was the rate of growth and the fact they supposedly bloom over a long season (for nectar) plus also do double duty as a host plant. I will treat them as annuals here in my zone 7b. Look at the third photo down on this page: Giant Swan Milkweed plant Try googling some of the following terms and you'll find a wealth of information on this plant. Gomphocarpus physocarpus = Asclepias physocarpa Family : Apocynaceae (Num-Num Family) Subfamily : Asclepiadoideae (Asclepiads or milkweeds) some Common names : balloon milkweed, balloon wild cotton, hairy balls milkweed, giant swan milkweed Mary Here is a link that might be useful: Photo of the seed pod on this plant

Angie, Glad you are happy with them. Sandy, If you are wanting some viridis seed, no problem fixing you up with some. Well Susan, are you ready for some monarchs? Went out this morning at daylight and collected 27 more eggs. I left about 10 eggs on plants because they were laid on the flower heads and I didn't want to remove those. I flagged the plants and will keep a close eye on them to gather up the cats if possible. I saw monarchs all day long yesterday. Don't know if they were the same or just a steady stream moving through. I was too busy moving plants to their outdoor homes for the season. randy

Congrats spaceman, I was getting sick of waiting so I went to a lake with a waystation and plucked a few Saturday. But our patch was finally discovered Sunday June 5. I haven't looked closely yet but saw 3 eggs from a quick glance. Most of our common is 3 feet tall and already has the green buds. They love to lay the eggs on those because the cats can easily hide inside. I can't go too crazy raising monarchs this year because two extra sections of garden take up a lot of time. For a brief moment, I am finally caught up on WEEDING....Yeah!

Tony, My ironweed/IO info is all secondhand. That is why I wrote that IOs "supposedly" eat ironweed. The only hostplant for IOs I can personally confirm is Japanese maple. IOs are a new arrow in my quiver so I have yet to do any experiments with hostplants. Considering I cannot let kids hold the cats, I don't know that I'll continue to raise them. Their highlight, when they are in the mood, is to form a circle and march in a circle. That was a huge crowd pleaser last year. Then, when I wasn't looking, the circle disappeared. I got in a huge panic. Where did they go??!! Eventually figured out the circle had moved to being on the rim of the container (cats were 1st or 2nd instar so still very small). This occurred at a "Monarch Day" display I do at a local metropark. KC