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What (who) is milkweed - definition

GENUS OF PLANTS

Milkweed; Milkweed Floss; Milk weed; Miikweeds; Milkweeds; Asclepiodora; Asclepiodella; Anantherix; Acerates; Biventraria; Podostemma; Aidomene; Odontostelma; Trachycalymma

milkweed

n.

Silkweed, wild cotton (Asclepias syriaca).

milkweed

¦ noun

1. a herbaceous American plant with milky sap. [Genus Asclepias.]

2. (also milkweed butterfly) another term for monarch (in sense 2).

Milkweed

·noun Any plant of the genera Asclepias and Acerates, abounding in a milky juice, and having its seed attached to a long silky down; silkweed. The name is also applied to several other plants with a milky juice, as to several kinds of spurge.

Wikipedia

Asclepias

Asclepias is a genus of herbaceous, perennial, flowering plants known as milkweeds, named for their latex, a milky substance containing cardiac glycosides termed cardenolides, exuded where cells are damaged. Most species are toxic to humans and many other species, primarily due to the presence of cardenolides, although, as with many such plants, there are species that feed upon them (e.g., their leaves) and from them (e.g., their nectar). Most notable are monarch butterflies, who use and require certain milkweeds as host plants for their larvae.

The genus contains over 200 species distributed broadly across Africa, North America, and South America. It previously belonged to the family Asclepiadaceae, which is now classified as the subfamily Asclepiadoideae of the dogbane family, Apocynaceae.

The genus was formally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753, who named it after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepias

Examples of use of milkweed

1. Conservationists say Taiwan has about 2 million milkweed butterflies.

2. The machinery removes assorted vegetation, including the milkweed plants, on which monarchs lay eggs and upon which their caterpillars feed.

3. "It‘d be better to get people to plant milkweed and give monarchs a place to feed." Agnew said she won‘t stop.

4. She spots the tiny monarch eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves, and brings them to an enclosure in the back of her store.

5. The eggs hatch into caterpillars, which gorge on milkweed leaves for about two weeks before forming a chrysalis, the cocoon–like structure in which their metamorphosis occurs.