Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Gentianales > Apocynaceae > Vincetoxicum > Vincetoxicum purpurascens

Vincetoxicum purpurascens (purple milkweed)

Synonyms:

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]  30 inches (0.75 m)
View Plants For A Future Record : Vincetoxicum purpurascens

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USDA Plant Profile

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
♦ 4Robertson, C. Flowers and insects lists of visitors of four hundred and fifty three flowers. 1929. The Science Press Printing Company Lancaster, PA.
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