Asclepias fascicularis Decne.   Asclepiadaceae (Milkweed Family)                                                     Native                                                              Narrow-Leaved Milkweed

                                          June Photo

Plant Characteristics:  Herbaceous, from deep-seated roots; the stems several, erect, 6-8 dm. high, glabrous; lvs. linear to linear-lanceolate, usually in whorls of 3-6, short-petioled, 3-10 mm. wide, 4-10 cm. long, commonly folded along midrib, persistent; umbels in terminal corymbose clusters, many-fld.; the peduncles exceeding the pedicels; calyx pubescent, ca. 2 mm. long; corolla greenish-white, often tinged purple, the oblong lobes 4-5 mm. long; hoods ca. as long as stamens, greenish-white; horns slender, exserted, incurved, generally exceeding hoods and anther heads; follicles smooth, narrow, 6-9 cm. long; seeds ca. 6 mm. long.

Habitat:  Frequent in colonies occurring in dry places mostly below 7000 ft.; many Plant Communities, mostly in cismontane areas away from the coast, occasional in the desert; Catalina and Santa Cruz Ids.; to Wash., Utah, L. Calif.  June-Aug.

Name:  The Greek name of Aesculapias, a physician, for whom the genus is named.  (Munz, Flora So. Calif. 92).  Latin, fasciculus, a bundle.  (Jaeger 101).  Probably referring to the many seeds within each follicle, which along with their pappus seem to over-fill the pod.  Or, the leaves in a whorl.

General:  Uncommon in the study area.  The photographed specimens were above the lower path from 23rd St. to the Delhi area. In 1995, another colony was found on the bluff just northerly of the 23rd St. watercourse.  (my comments).      The various species of milkweed are the larval food-plant of the large orange and black migratory Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus), which over-winters in coastal foothill areas of California.  On her travels north, the female lays up to 700 eggs.  One expert claims that she deposits only one egg to a plant, which, if true, would mean that an abundant supply is required.  Alkaloids in Asclepias render the Monarch unpalatable as food for birds.   The Indians had many uses for milkweed, they found the blossoms sweet and spicy when eaten raw.  They heated the milky juice until solid, added bean fat, salmon fat or deer grease and made chewing gum.  The Indians utilized the tough fibers in numerous ways.  (Dale 49).     Two species widely used by the Indians were: A. speciosa and A. eriocarpa.  The stems do not appear to have been soaked to release the fibers, as with flax, but the bark was removed and the fibers released by first rubbing between the hands and then drawing the mass of fibers over a stock.  The cord was rolled on the thigh in the same manner as Mescal.  The Cahuilla Indians of the western Colo. desert and the San Jacinto region used the juice from the stems of A. fascicularis as a gum.  It was also said to have been used in mounting jewelry.  (Balls 78-79).       Fibers of the genus were used by the Gabrielino Indians, the people who inhabited what is now the greater Los Angeles area, to make string and cordage.  The fiber strands were rolled on the thigh.  Both sexes joined in this occupation.  The strings were rolled into two and four ply, and possibly 3-ply as well and rope was formed of several strands of two-ply string. (Johnston, page ref. not recorded).    The monarch butterfly is the only insect known to make an annual round-trip migration-like birds-to a warmer climate.  The U.S. monarch population winters in two sites that are climatically similar yet thousands of miles apart:  The Sierra Madre mountains of central Mexico and the Calif. coast.  The butterflies are commonly found in eucalyptus trees near the coast and in low-lying areas where there is plenty of milkweed.  Although the central California coast has more monarch roosting sites than southern California, monarchs can be found in Orange County in coastal areas and low-lying canyons.  The same butterflies don't make the entire round trip.  Once they reach their destination  they spend their days looking for nectar before bunching at nightfall in communal roosts, a particularly spectacular sight in Mexico, where monarchs cluster 10 million to the acre.  In the spring, the monarch mates and then usually dies, because the life span of the insect is six to nine months.  But the second generation of offspring begins the migration back, leaving eggs along the way, and subsequent generations carry on the migration.  Monarchs hatched in the late spring and summer initiate the fall migration.  In California, what we've found is when they leave the coast they fly to the Sierras and lay eggs says Chris Nagano of the Natural History Museum.  The caterpillars develop and fly a little more inland.  And the next generation flies more inland.  Probably about the fourth generation returns to the coast in the fall.  Because no monarch makes the complete round trip migration, scientists assume the insects find their winter sites by instinct, not by following their elders.  Certain species of milkweed plants contain a poison called cardiac glycosides, which is similar to the heart drug digitalis.  During its larval stage, the monarch consumes large amounts of milkweed and although the caterpillar is unaffected by the poison, any bird that eats the caterpillar or the adult butterfly is poisoned.  Eating an adult monarch butterfly is the only thing that will make a bird vomit, says Norman Campbell, a retired pediatrician who had been collecting and studying bugs and butterflies since 1933.  Birds soon learn that it's wise to avoid monarchs and this fact has not escaped the notice of some other butterfly species.  Although they don't feed on milkweed or carry its poison, viceroy butterflies are thought to mimic the monarch's orange and black wing design in order to frighten predators.   (Roan, Shari.  Monarch Mystery.  Orange County Register  August 26, l987, Section E).         Medicinal uses for milkweed species included treatment of sores, warts, and ringworm with a gum from the boiled juice.  A tea was used for coughs.  (Bauer 158).      Three milkweeds are listed as potentially poisonous plants, particularly when found growing in selenium soil, including the poison milkweed, A. galioides; the Mexican milkweed, A. fascicularis; and the whorled milkweed, A. verticillata.  The poisonous principle is a resinous substance soluble in alcohol.  (Fielder 248).       Nets of all sizes were used for fishing in fresh waters and still bays.  The material for them was made from bark fibers or the outside fibers of Indian hemp and milkweed.  (Bauer 75).       The long-held notion that the tasty viceroy escapes being eaten by birds by mimicking the coloration of foul-tasting monarch and queen butterflies has been overturned by two Florida biologists who tested the century-old belief experimentally.  They report in today's edition of the British journal Nature that they tore the wings off all three types of butterflies and fed their bodies to red-winged blackbirds for a novel taste test.  To their surprise, the researchers found that the monarch and the viceroy butterflies were equally distasteful to the birds and that the queen butterfly-supposedly the object of mimicry-actually tasted better than the other two.  The results undermine a theory that has been part of standard biology textbooks for decades.  The theory was proposed by British biologist Walter Bates in 1862 and is one of the most enduring notions of evolutionary biology.  Bates studied Amazonian butterflies but never the viceroy and monarch butterflies.  In fact, until recently, no one did.  What works for the Amazonian butterflies does not necessarily work for other species. (Thomas H. Maugh II, "Research Exposes Myth on Butterfly Coloring"  Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition.  April 11, 1991.  Section A, page not recorded).      John Johnson recalls that tests similar to those related above, were made years ago with Blue Jays and that it was reported that the Jays became very ill from eating Monarchs, but relished the Viceroys when fed only the bodies without the wings.  John Johnson also stated that if the disagreeableness of Viceroys is found to be true, it still doesn't disprove protective resemblance.  The protective resemblance may have been carried beyond resemblance in wing patterns, to resemblance in unpalatability. (John Johnson).        Just as California's own resident population of black-and-orange mottled butterflies begins its annual migration to Monterey and half a dozen other well-known wintering sites in December, monarchs from all over North America, east of the Rockies, are busy fluttering south to Mexico.  This remarkable journey, while continuing to confound scientists, is one of nature's most beguiling phenomena.  The best place to see the monarchs is the El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, in the mountains just above the town of Angangueo in Michoacan state, about 110 miles west of Mexico City.  Dr. Fred Urquhart, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, began his search for the butterflies hiding place prior to World War II.  With the help of a large group of volunteers, he affixed tiny alar badges to the wings of more than 100,000 monarch butterflies in the eastern United States and Canada.  The flight paths of the recaptured butterflies indicated that their destination was central Mexico but given the size of the country it was not until January 1976 that the site above Angangueo was found.  Examination showed that one of the butterflies wore a tag showing that it had been released in Chaska, Minn. the previous September (the life of a monarch butterfly can extend for up to a year, much longer than the normal butterfly).  After four decades of dedicated work, a lifelong riddle was solved.  On a visit to the sanctuary, the guide directed our attention to the ground, lest we tread on the insects.  Some were dead, but most were just gathering strength before joining the seemingly millions that clung like over-ripe fruit to the branches above.  The sanctuary is not a breeding ground.  Monarchs are sexually dormant in the over-wintering site, patiently-one assumes- awaiting warmer temperatures before journeying north, then mating along the way.  En route to the United States and Canada, the females deposit eggs on milkweed plants.  Four to five days later, they hatch.  The larval, or caterpillar, stage lasts two weeks, and the pupal stage during which the insect hangs suspended and completes its metamorphosis-another two.  About a month after hatching from the egg, a new generation of butterflies wings its way north.  Urquhart documents how the first butterflies arrive in his native Ontario in June, with faded colors and tattered wings, having flown the entire distance from Mexico.  Their offspring arrive later that summer, more vividly colored and showing less evidence of wear and tear.  These are the butterflies that will return to Mexico in the fall.  How they find their way there remains a mystery.  Traces of magnetite in their brains may function as a sort of compass for navigation.  Some observers have that the butterflies travel by celestial navigation, while Alicia Budris of New York's Stonybrook University postulates that communication, similar to the kind observed among honeybees, play a major role.  The most perplexing question, however, is posed by Urquhart in his book, "The Monarch Butterfly: International Traveler":  "Why would monarch butterflies travel thousands of miles to spend the winter months on the trees of this cold mountain when only a few miles further on are warm tropical valleys?"   (Ellman, Eric. "Where Monarch Butterflies Vacation In Winter" Los Angeles Times, 24 Nov. 1991, Orange County Edition, Travel Sect.: L3).       Scientists at Cornell University reported in the journal of Nature that the pollen from genetically engineered corn containing a toxin gene called Bt killed 44% of the monarch butterfly caterpillars that fed on milkweed leaves dusted with it.  By contrast, caterpillars fed with conventional pollen all survived.  The results are all the more shocking given the fact that nearly 25% of the U.S. corn crop now contains the Bt transgene and the Corn Belt states of the Midwest are where half of the monarch butterflies are hatched each year.  In the wake of the monarch butterfly study, a growing number of scientists now say they wonder about the potential environmental effects of scores of other genetically engineered crops being introduced into agricultural fields.  Some critics are asking, why weren't these and other studies done before introducing genetically engineered corn, soy, cotton and other crops over millions of acres of farm land?  (Rifkin, Jeremy.  "Think Twice Before Trying to Outwit Nature"  Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1999, Orange County Edition, B7).       A. tuberosa, Pleurisy Root,  has been used in the treatment of pleurisy.  It is excellent to break up colds, for la grippe, and all bronchial and pulmonary complaints.  Very useful in scarlet fever, rheumatic fevers, lung fever, bilious fever, typhus, and all burning fevers, also measles.  Good for suppressed menstruation and acute dysentery.  (Kloss 297).     The Cahuilla used Asclepias fascicularis as an adhesive.  They collected the white sap for the purpose.  (Campbell 334).      A rather large genus of the New World.  (Munz, Flora So. Calif. 92).   

Text Ref:  Jepson 773; Hickman, Ed. 172; Munz, Flora So. Calif. 93; Roberts 8.

Photo Ref:  May-June 86 # 20,21,22; Aug 1 86 # 22,23.

Identity: by R. De Ruff, confirmed by F. Roberts.

First Found:  June 1986

Computer Ref:  Plant Data 135

Have plant specimen.

Last edit 7/4/05.  

                             June Photo                                                                 August Photo