Most kids want to be firefighters or racecar drivers when they grow up. I wanted to be a botanist. While that never happened, I still found time to learn about plants and photograph them. I still have my old Contax 35 mm film camera and extension tubes in the basement. Sadly, my phone does not produce the same image quality.
It is always exciting to find a plant I have never seen before. It was even more exciting to find a new plant on our property. While walking through our back woods in early July, I came across a plant in a small group just off the trail. The plant was about 2 feet tall, with opposite leaves and a loose rounded umbel of flowers at the top. At first, I did not know what to make of the plant as the flowers looked a bit odd to me. The flowers were about a half-inch long, mostly white, with five green petals or sepals that extended back from the white petals. While walking back to the house, it occurred to me that the flowers looked a bit like those on Common Milkweed, only larger.
I pulled my 30-year old copy of Peterson’s Guide to Wildflowers from the bookshelf and paged through the section covering white flowers. The plant appeared to be Poke Milkweed (Asclepias exaltata). Using a more modern reference, I posted a couple of photographs on the “Plant Identification” group I belong to on Facebook. Within 5 minutes, someone confirmed my initial identification. A new plant to list in our farm journal.
A quick internet search did not indicate the plant is used for medicinal purposes – on the contrary, one or two sites indicated the plant was mildly toxic, which is a common trait of milkweed plants. The flowers are supposed to be fragrant, but I did not notice that, but I have a poor sense of small. I’ll have to take a closer look (or small) the next trip into the woods. I may also have to add a better camera to our shopping list.
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