Milkweed has a long history as a natural remedyand has many other uses, too! Plus, milkweed is food for beautiful monarch butterflies.
NATURAL REMEDIES WITH MILKWEED
Once upon a time, milkweed was commonly used in a number of natural remedies:
Native Americans taught early European settlers how to properly cook milkweed so that it could be safely eaten.
The milky white sap was applied topically to remove warts, and the roots were chewed to cure dysentery.
Infusions of the roots and leaves were taken to suppress coughs and used to treat typhus fever and asthma.
Inside the plant is a sticky white sap that contains a mild poison; its bitter taste warns away many of the animals and insects that try to eat its tender leaves, including humans.
Certain insects, including monarch butterfly caterpillars, are immune to the toxin. By feeding almost exclusively on milkweed leaves, they are able to accumulate enough of the poison in their bodies to make them distasteful to predators which means that milkweed is a great plant for butterflies.
The nectar in all milkweed flowers provides valuable food for butterflies, bees, and other pollinators. Butterflies dont only need nectar, but also need food at the caterpillar stage. And monarch butterflies need milkweed to lay their eggs. With shifting land management practices and pesticide use, we have lost much milkweed from the landscape. This has led to a 90% decline in the number of monarch Bbutterflies in a just single decade.
FUN FACTS
The stems tough, stringy fibers were twisted into strong twine and rope, or woven into coarse fabric.
Inside milkweeds rough seed pods is another wonderful surprise: The fluffy white floss, attached to milkweeds flat brown seeds, could be used to stuff pillows, mattresses, and quilts, and was carried as tinder to start fires.
During World War II, the regular material used to stuff life jackets was in short supply, so milkweed floss was called for as a substitute & is about six times more buoyant than cork!
We doubt if this surprisingly useful plant will run out of surprises anytime soon!
