I have rooted tropical milkweed easily by just putting it in water. Have seen roots usually within a week. I am not sure if this helps.

You could bring a milkweed leaf indoors, one with an egg. I will put the leaf in a small cup with a bit of water in the bottom, to keep the leaf hydrated. If its a monarch egg, it will hatch in 3 or 4 days. First instar monarch cats are pretty tiny. You might have to hand rear the caterpillar to the 2nd or 3rd instar to be certain that its actually a monarch cat.

No. I look at this plant every day. It's like other milkweed flowering stems where you have one main stem and then it branches to several stems where the flowers bloom, except instead of flowers, it's seed pods - like 5 seed pods opening at different times on the one main stem. And they have Milkweed Bugs just waiting for that pod to open! The seeds are flat brown (like a flattened dried up black-eyed pea) and attached to a silky white blow-away "parachute"... to help carry them for growing. Each pod holds no less than 50 seeds. Now, the seed pod may start out looking like a teeny tiny cauliflower (if I recall), but it's nothing that produces nectar as there is nothing that comes to it - Monarchs/bees/hummers/flies flutter around my flowering milkweed all day. I will try to get a pic when I can. Monarch Watch was at our local botanical garden last weekend and I talked to a few of the workers and no one could help. Maybe I need to go back to the nursery where they were purchased! And I agree, Orange Butterfly Weed is pretty! I wish I had some!!! The leaves of this one are identical to the Swamp Milkweed (with the light pink flowers).

I did some googling, I did find that they created a hybrid by crossing showy milkweed w/ common milkweed, for the purpose of increased silk. Evidently that hybrid is trying to be used as a crop for insulation that they mix in w/ feather down. The cross worked, the pods just created more silk and less seeds. I'd like to see a pic of that hybrid. As for any other....I'm still looking!