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.

Did you cold stratify the seeds? (not sure if by winter sowed you meant outside, or just sowed inside the house over the winter). I had terrific germination from my off-the-rack A. incar. seeds, cold stratified for about a month in the fridge.

They sat out all winter. I wasn't too wrecked about it. I'm more interested in growing new species than old ones with color variations in flower or leaf. Somebody here supposedly has a pure white blooming A. syriaca, tho I haven't seen evidence, and there was that white flowered speciosa a while back. Maybe I should try the fridge thing next time. I would recommend using miccorhizae with all your milkweeds. They are quite dependent on it and many require it to germinate. My ovalifolias seemed to wither and dissapear, but they may still live.

^^ Oh, yea, that's right -- it was you who was doing the ovalifolias, wasn't it. I planted the rest of mine outside and poof! there they went. No wonder they're rare... pfffftttt…..

Same story with mine. Starting round 2!

Mine were Round 2 :o/

I had this one, didn't notice if it was still here this season. I liked it with the Pink one, I forget the name. I started mine from seed - winter sowing.

I did buy several Ice Ballets this year. The leaves and stems were a brighter green than the species plants but they didn't splay. In that way, they looked the same as other plants the same size. On the other hand, I had one species plant that grew very full this year and I had to support it with a ring.