Asclepias curassavica

Asclepias curassavica is excellent in butterfly gardens or as a cut flower. However, when the stems or leaves are broken, a poisonous milky sap exudes which can cause eye injury. There are a number of different cultivars with improved flower colors and shorter habit, some have brilliant red, yellow or orange coloured flowers. It boasts attractive, exotic, bi-coloured orange-red and yellow flowers and it blooms freely in mid-summer. The flowers are followed by long narrow seed-pods that when they split open, reveal seeds with long silky threads.. Requires well-drained slightly sandy and acidic soil.

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  Full sun to partial shade

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  Occasional watering

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  A little frost hardy: 32F (0°C)

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  Light and free draining