California Milkweed

Description

Asclepias californica is a species of milkweed known by the common name California milkweed. It grows throughout lower northern, central and southern California. Asclepias californica is native to California and northern Baja California. It is a flowering perennial with thick, white, woolly stems which bend or run along the ground. The plentiful, hanging flowers are rounded structures with reflexed corollas and starlike arrays of bulbous anthers. Asclepias californica is an important monarch butterfly caterpillar host plant, and chrysalis habitat plant. The cardiac glycosides caterpillars ingest from the plant are retained in the butterfly, making it unpalatable to predators. This plant was eaten as candy by the Kawaiisu tribes of indigenous California; the milky sap within the leaves is flavorful and chewy when cooked, but can be poisonous when raw.