Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), will brighten your garden with beautiful orange flowers

Are you looking for an unusual, undemanding perennial flower that will brighten your garden with beautiful flowers? Well, go for Asclepias tuberosa and your garden should get the attention it deserves. It forms a nice and dense growth and it is a rather rare so it will give your garden the “special” touch.

Asclepias tuberosa blooms from mid-summer to early autumn and it enlightens your garden with great colours. To maintain these lively colours, make sure to remove old and faded flowers. Do not worry flowers last rather long time so you only need to remove them about twice a month. Use scissors to do so.

Butterfly weed serves as “double” decoration

First, you get flowers growing in large clusters at the tops of stems. About 30 cm above the ground. In autumn, the plant displays large pods filled with seeds. Later they open and flood your garden with white fluff but we do not recommend waiting that long as this weakens the plant. If you want to propagate butterfly weed from seeds, you can let one or two ripen. That should give you enough seeds.

The second time when butterfly weed will please you is when it forms spirally arranged leaves growing on stems about 10-14 cm long. They are very nice and fresh green just about the time when butterfly weed stopped blooming.

Photo: Pixabay

Proper cultivation and care

Butterfly weed does not like wet soil, especially in winter, so always plant it into a permeable substrate, preferably in an uneven terrain or on a slope. You should protect the plant from winter rain with a piece of foil or non-woven fabric. But if you planted in a rather sunny spot, you should cover it with well-dried bark chips.

That’s it.Butterfly weed only needs watering during very dry periods of the year and even then it only needs moderate watering. Butterfly weed is one of those few plants that grow best if you leave it alone and let it live its own life…

Preview photo: Wikimedia.commons.org