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Green Milkweed - Asclepias viridiflora
Native Species
Global Rank:
G5
State Rank:
S3S4
C-value:
4
Agency Status
USFWS:
USFS:
BLM:
External Links
General Description
Taprooted with a usually simple crown. Stems usually simple, 10–50 cm. Herbage puberulent to tomentose. Leaves spreading to erect, opposite to subopposite; blades lance-linear to ovate, 4–15 cm long. Umbels of 20 to 80 flowers; peduncles 2–15 mm long. Flowers 9–12 mm high; sepals 2–3 mm long, glabrate; petals green, puberulent, 4–7 mm long; gynostegium light green, glabrous, 2–3 mm high; hoods oblong, 4–5 mm long with a pair of shallow, marginal lobes at midlength and a dorsal, petal-like appendage; horns absent. Follicles erect, ovoid-fusiform, smooth, glabrate to puberulent, 7–10 cm long (
Lesica et al. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. BRIT Press. Fort Worth, TX).
Species Range
Montana Range
Range Descriptions
Native
Range Comments
A milkweed known from Connecticut and southern New York, west to Michigan and Manitoba, and south to Georgia, Arizona and northern Mexico. It is more common in the western portions of the range.
Observations in Montana Natural Heritage Program Database
Number of Observations: 115
(Click on the following maps and charts to see full sized version)
Map Help and Descriptions
Relative Density
Recency
(Observations spanning multiple months or years are excluded from time charts)
Habitat
Ecology
POLLINATORS The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap:
Bombus vagans,
Bombus huntii,
Bombus rufocinctus,
Bombus ternarius,
Bombus terricola,
Bombus pensylvanicus,
Bombus bimaculatus,
Bombus griseocollis,
Bombus impatiens,
Bombus insularis, and
Bombus flavidus (Plath 1934, Heinrich 1976, Thorp et al. 1983, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Colla et al. 2011, Koch et al. 2012, Williams et al. 2014, Tripoldi and Szalanski 2015).
References
- Literature Cited AboveLegend:
View Online Publication
Colla, S., L. Richardson, and P. Williams. 2011. Bumble bees of the eastern United States. Washington, DC: USDA Forest Service, Pollinator Partnership. 103 p.- Colla, S.R. and S. Dumesh. 2010. The bumble bees of southern Ontario: notes on natural history and distribution. Journal of the Entomological Society of Ontario 141:39-68.
- Koch, J., J. Strange, and P. Williams. 2012. Bumble bees of the western United States. Washington, DC: USDA Forest Service, Pollinator Partnership. 143 p.
- Lesica, P., M.T. Lavin, and P.F. Stickney. 2012. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants. Fort Worth, TX: BRIT Press. viii + 771 p.
- Plath, O.E. 1934. Bumblebees and their ways. New York, NY: Macmillan Company. 201 p.
- Thorp, R.W., D.S. Horning, and L.L. Dunning. 1983. Bumble bees and cuckoo bumble bees of California (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Bulletin of the California Insect Survey 23:1-79.
- Tripoldi, A.D. and A.L. Szalanski. 2015. The bumble bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Bombus) of Arkansas, fifty years later. Journal of Melittology 50: doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17161/jom.v0i50.4834
- Williams, P., R. Thorp, L. Richardson, and S. Colla. 2014. Bumble Bees of North America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 208 p.
- Additional ReferencesLegend: View Online Publication
Do you know of a citation we're missing?- DuBois, K.L. 1979. An inventory of the avifauna in the Long Pines of Southeastern Montana. M.Sc. Thesis. Bozeman, MT: Montana State University. 113 p.
- Lesica, P., M.T. Lavin, and P.F. Stickney. 2022. Manual of Montana Vascular Plants, Second Edition. Fort Worth, TX: BRIT Press. viii + 779 p.
- Seipel, T.F. 2006. Plant species diversity in the sagebrush steppe of Montana. M.Sc. Thesis. Bozeman, MT: Montana State University. 87 p.
- Skilbred, Chester L. 1979. Plant succession on five naturally revegetated strip-mined deposits at Colstrip, Montana. M.Sc. Thesis. Bozeman, MT: Montana State University. 128 pp.
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