Common Milkweed

So everyone knows that monarch butterflies are really into milkweed – their caterpillars eat it and the adult butterflies sip from the blooms. But take it from me, milkweed’s appeal goes way, way beyond monarchs. When I waded out of a ditch clutching milkweed cuttings, I didn’t know I was carrying bug high rises. Until I put them in the car and started driving home. Then I noticed.

Ants, fireflies, beetles, and families of insects I don’t have names for marched up and down the stems, crawled out from underneath the leaves, and got stuck in the sticky milky sap the plants were bleeding. As I hurriedly rolled down my car windows and tried to coax an expanding cloud of insects into leaving, the cuttings – which were already drooping badly – mocked me from the passenger seat. Dang it.

It turns out that successfully photographing milkweed depends on a carefully planned, warp-speed campaign that goes as follows: have your photo equipment set up, powered on and fine-tuned ahead of time > locate a milkweed patch really close to your studio > find a specimen with foliage that hasn’t already been chewed to rags by bugs > remove as many bugs as possible before cutting > cut it > run like the wind to the studio, flicking off the remaining bugs as you go > arrange and shoot it, fast. Milkweed waits for no one.

Is it worth the effort? You betcha. I hadn’t been this close to milkweeds in bloom, and the dramatic shape and color of the flowers took me by surprise. An extra bonus: they smell amazing. All those bugs are onto something.

Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca
Shoot date: June 26, 2019
Possible use as a cut flower: Nope. But stop by a ditch around the end of June and give them a sniff.