Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Gentianales > Apocynaceae > Asclepias > Asclepias hallii

Asclepias hallii (Hall's milkweed; Hall milkweed)

Synonyms: Asclepias curvipes; Asclepias lonchophylla

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-Low
Edible [2]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [2]  Hermaphrodite
Hazards [2]  Although no specific reports have been seen for this species, many, if not all, members of this genus contain toxic resinoids, alkaloids and cardiac glycosides; They are usually avoided by grazing animals;
Lifespan [2]  Perennial
Pollinators [2]  Bees, Insects, Lepidoptera, Lepidoptera
Structure [3]  Herb
Usage [2]  The following uses have been recorded for A. speciosa, it is fairly safe to assume they can also be applied to this closely related species; A good quality tough fibre is obtained from the bark; It is used in twine, coarse cloth, paper etc; The fibre is 10 - 45mm long; It is easily harvested in late autumn, after the plants have died down, by simply pulling it off the dead stems; When making paper, the stems can be retted by leaving them in the ground until they are dry in the winter or they can be harvested in late summer, the leaves removed and the stems steamed to remove the fibre; The stems are then cooked for two hours with lye and pounded with mallets; The paper colour varies from white to creamy green depending on how the paper is made; If the stems are used in the summer the latex will often find its way onto the fibres and is hard to remove; The seed floss is used to stuff pillows etc or is mixed with other fibres to make cloth; It is a Kapok substitute, used in Life Jackets or as a stuffing material; It is very water repellent. The floss has also been used to mop up oil spills at sea. Rubber can be made from latex contained in the leaves and the stems; The yield is up to 3%; Pods contain an oil and a wax which are of potential importance. A green dye is obtained from the flowers and leaves combined;
Height [2]  39 inches (1 m)
Width [2]  24 inches (0.6 m)
View Plants For A Future Record : Asclepias hallii

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument III 5997 Colorado, United States

Providers

Pollinated by 
Apis mellifera (honey bee)[4]
Bembix spinolae[4]
Eupeodes americanus (American hover fly)[4]
Triepeolus texanus[5]

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
2Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
3USDA Plants Database, U. S. Department of Agriculture
4Clements, R. E., and F. L. Long. 1923, Experimental pollination. An outline of the ecology of flowers and insects. Washington, D.C., USA, Carnegie Institute of Washington.
5Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0