Floating Milkweed Seed

by Robert Bales

Title

Floating Milkweed Seed

Artist

Robert Bales

Medium

Photograph - Photo

Description

These are always fun to find and try to get a good photo of the floating seed.

Milkweed is named for its milky sap, which consists of a latex containing alkaloids and several other complex compounds including cardenolides. Some species are known to be toxic.
Pollination in this genus is accomplished in an unusual manner. Pollen is grouped into complex structures called pollinia (or "pollen sacs"), rather than being individual grains or tetrads, as is typical for most plants. The feet or mouthparts of flower-visiting insects such as bees, wasps and butterflies, slip into one of the five slits in each flower formed by adjacent anthers. The bases of the pollinia then mechanically attach to the insect, pulling a pair of pollen sacs free when the pollinator flies off, assuming the insect is large enough to produce the necessary pulling force (if not, the insect may become trapped and die. Pollination is effected by the reverse procedure in which one of the pollinia becomes trapped within the anther slit.
Asclepias species produce their seeds in follicles. The seeds, which are arranged in overlapping rows, bear a cluster white, silky, filament-like hairs known as the coma[4] (often referred to by other names such as pappus, "floss", "plume", or "silk"). The follicles ripen and split open, and the seeds, each carried by its coma, are blown by the wind.
They have many different flower colorations, depending on species.

Uploaded

January 7th, 2016

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