When I was a kid milkweed used to grow along a sunny section of stream behind my neighbor’s house. We would tear the leaves and cause the white sap to ooze forth— delighted each time by this confirmation of its name. In late summer we would crack open the pods and send the silken-tailed seeds flying. What is softer or lighter than milkweed floss? This is what I think of when I hold these in my hand. At the time I couldn’t imagine that milkweed was the singular food source of monarch butterfly larvae, nor that it was being edged out of farm fields and stream banks, and certainly not that in just the short time it took me to reach adulthood they would both become imperiled. This and countless other host plants and their uniquely adapted invertebrate partners.
