A foot and a half tall, with very fragrant flowers, and very woolly all over, especially the upper leaves, stems and buds, which are thick with long white wool. The buds are pinkish-purple and the flowers have dull pink petals and cream-colored hoods, becoming yellow, and form clusters over two inches across. This grows in the Mohave Desert and the effect is harmonious, but not so handsome as the last.
The genus Gomphocarpus is distinguished from Asclepias by the absence of horns or crests in the hoods.
Purple Milkweed
Gomphocàrpus cordifòlius (Asclepias)
Purple and yellow
Summer
Oreg., Cal.
A handsome plant, smooth all over and more or less tinged with purple, with a stout, purple stem, from one and a half to three feet tall, with rubbery, dull, light bluish-green leaves. The flowers are scentless, with purplish sepals, maroon or purple petals, and yellowish or pinkish hoods, and form a very loose graceful cluster, over three inches across, dark in color and contrasting well with the foliage. This is common in Yosemite and elsewhere in California, at moderate altitudes.
The genus Asclepiodora, of the southern part of North America, resembles Asclepias, but the flowers are larger, the petals not turned back, the hoods flatter, with crests instead of horns; leaves mainly alternate; corolla wheel-shaped; petals spreading; hoods oblong, blunt, spreading and curving upward, crested inside; five tiny appendages alternating with the anthers and forming an inner crown around the stigma. The name is from the Greek, meaning the gift of Æsculapius.
Pale Milkweed—Asclepias erosa.
Purple Milkweed—Gomphocarpus cordifolius.
Spider Milkweed
Asclepiodòra decúmbens
Green and maroon
Spring, summer
Southwest
A striking plant, though dull in color, from one to one and a half feet tall, with a rough, rather slanting stem, dull green, roughish, rather leathery leaves, and clusters of slightly sweet-scented, queer-looking flowers, each over half an inch across, with greenish-yellow petals, the hoods white inside and maroon outside, their tips curved in, a green stigma and brown anthers. The effect is a dull-yellow rosette, striped with maroon, curiously symmetrical and stiff in form, suggesting an heraldic "Tudor rose." The pods, three or four inches long, stand up stiffly, on pedicels curved like hooks. This grows on dry hillsides and is widely distributed.