I have often stood in the kitchen with a craving for a particular food, without being able to figure out what exactly it is that I want. Crunchy, salty, sweet, a protein, maybe some fruit—sometimes I taste one after the other, but something is still missing. When nothing I eat is truly satisfying, what is it that I really want? What kind of sustenance am I lacking? With so many jumbled signals and messages in our culture that add to our hunger, sometimes it can be almost impossible to know what truly nourishes us.
What would it feel like to have the certainty of the monarch butterfly who knows exactly what food will nourish their babies? Milkweed has become quite widely known in recent decades for being the singular food of the caterpillars of monarch butterflies, and for how our changing climate is jeopardizing their long-standing relationship. The monarch’s multi-generational migration and reliance on milkweed has engaged millions of people who may never have been interested before in the intricates of nature’s ecosystems. Yet milkweed is so much more than just food for monarch butterflies. This incredible plant is a veritable cafeteria of nourishment for so many.
Walking through a field of common milkweed in bloom immerses me in the full ripeness of summer when their rich fragrance carrying hints of honey, lilac, and spicy jasmine makes me swoon with a longing that I can’t quite place. I am transported to a long-ago time when my primary way of knowing my world was largely by taste and smell. A memory of deep nourishment stirs in my bones, a longing for sustenance that was once simple and fulfilling.
Milkweed says: “I can feel your quest for the perfect food, the one that deeply satisfies. What will nourish you is knowing what feeds your soul. Like the monarch caterpillars who feed only on my leaves, your fruition depends on finding what uniquely feeds you, what lights up your eyes, and makes your heart beat faster. Only then will you be ready to bring the world exactly what it needs most from you.”
Milkweed nectar easily becomes the dominant scent wherever they are in bloom. They produce an enormous amount of concentrated nectar, that attracts a great variety and number of insects of all different shapes and sizes, both day and night. For several weeks each summer, these milkweeds lay out an enormous banquet for all their insect and hummingbird friends.
Reaching exuberantly above most other grasses and flowers around them, milkweed holds their large airy spheres of pink and purple flowers up to the sun, like signposts for all to see. They grow along roadsides, in farm fields, meadows, and most any open disturbed land, with their tenacious rhizome roots spreading to form communities of milkweed families. Their large oval leaves host many kinds of insects and surround their ball-shaped flower umbels—each a cluster of fifty or more flowers that appear as outward facing stars. There are over one hundred species of milkweed that have evolved over 65 million years throughout North and South America. Common milkweed, or Asclepias syriaca, are the largest of the milkweeds, and native to most of the eastern United States and Canada.
Milkweed earns its name because of the white, sticky, bitter, toxic sap that flows through their leaves and stems. When is a poison protective and when might it also be nourishing? The monarch caterpillars, who eat the leaves and sap exclusively, don’t digest the toxins—rather, they store them in their body. Then if a bird eats a caterpillar or butterfly full of the concentrated milkweed sap, it makes the bird sick, and they learn not to eat any more of those brightly striped worms. The bitter toxic taste of the leaves keeps most other insects and animals from eating very much of them, but at least a dozen beetles and other bugs relish them and feed exclusively on them just as the monarchs do. This milky sap literally becomes part of the insects that feast on the milkweed leaves and protects the insects in turn, becoming both protective and a perfect nourishment. Milkweed is helping those insects that prey on them become protected from their own predators, or more simply said—milkweed’s nourishment provides protection for its predators.
The flowers that bloom most of the summer and into early autumn, do not carry the bitter, milky sap and are a veritable feast for all insects with their rich nectar. Bees, butterflies, ants, beetles and more all flock to the nourishing habitat that the entire milkweed plant creates. For the monarchs and the dozen or so other beetles and insects who feed only on milkweed, this nourishing habitat becomes their exclusive home as well, at least for a season.
After their blooms wilt, several large seed pods form on each flower cluster, full of up to two hundred or more seeds, each one attached to a silk filament that when released allows the seed to float on the wind like a fairy. These beautiful silk fibers, called fluff, have been used for pillows, insulation, and amazingly, 2.5 million pounds of them were collected by school children during World War II to be used as life preservers.
Native peoples once ate the common milkweed, (not recommended, see footnote[1]), used it for medicine and made rope and string with the fibers from the stalks. They would pick the young emerging stalks of the common milkweed species that are said to taste like a cross between asparagus and green beans. The unopened flower heads were cooked like broccoli, and the young, unripe seed pods were also tasty. Mature leaves and stems were never eaten. Other species can be even more bitter and higher in toxins and were avoided altogether, and the sap of all varieties can be irritating to the skin and especially to the eyes.
Milkweed offers so much nourishment and shelter to so many, like a true matriarch, but what nourishes the milkweed? They too, are always looking for the perfect food—the perfect home—to sow their seeds for new communities, to create new life for the next generation. What home do they dream of? Is it where the insects are plentiful, where the dirt is rich and sustaining, where the sun shines brightly, and just enough rain falls—a place where the land has been disturbed and opened a welcome bed for them? They create a home for a season, or a lifetime, until what made that home nourishing shifts and a new home begins to call to them. With over 65 million years of milkweed generations, how many millions of times have they longed for and then found the perfect home, the perfect nourishment, only to be uprooted again by an ever-changing environment? They have learned to follow their longings that guide them, over and over again, to a new home.
Milkweed will tell us that just as it took a long time for the milkweed and monarch butterflies to perfect their appetites for each other, we will find what feeds us too, if we keep looking and longing and asking.
When I ask myself, what do I really want, the enormity of the question can overwhelm me. After decades of being taught that my desires are not to be trusted and to put my responsibilities and the needs of others first, I am out of practice and have forgotten how to listen to my heart. To open myself to a whole field of milkweed and allow my desires to waft on the breeze alongside their sweet perfume is both intoxicating and terrifying. Our heart’s desires are the perfect food, the food our soul longs for. How often when I am rummaging through the refrigerator am I trying to appease the longings of my soul, rather than just my body’s hunger? What home am I truly looking for?
Milkweed says: “Trust your longings for the home that nourishes both your body and your heart. Never stop asking for what truly feeds you and makes your heart sing.”
[1] The sap contains cardiac glycosides that are bitter tasting and can disrupt the ionic balance of a number of different cell types in animals, including heart muscle, vascular smooth muscle, neurons, and kidney tubules (Malcolm, 1995). In high doses they can be fatal to an animal, but in nature this will rarely happen since they cause vomiting in pre-lethal doses. The flowers do not carry any of the toxins.
What a treat to read - food for the soul 🧡
We do not have milkweed in this part of the world (Emerald Isle), neither monarch butterflies but you brought me into a whole new world 🥰 Heart's desire cannot be found in a fridge but perhaps in a field, out there or within. More likely, within....
Mary you continue to bring these plants alive to me. Last week I thought how wonderful to be bee balm and experience ecstasy with visiting bees. This post makes me want to be milkweed understanding my true purpose. It’s a gift how you speak for the plants that speak to you 💚