Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
June 7, 1819
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 98
Additional Source Text:
"Tthe French in Canada eate the tender shoots in Spring as we do the Asparagus. It also produces a cotton which is used for making of Beds."
Notes:
A "palatable" brown sugar can be made by boiling down the dew from flowers of the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). The coma from the seeds is also used in bedding and in life jackets. Charles Francis Saunders, Edible and useful wild plants of the United States and Canada (New York, 1976), p. 219
Peale's Scientific Name:
Asclepias Syriaca
Current Common Name:
Common milkweed, butterfly flower, silkweed, silky swallow-wort, and Virginia silkweed
Current Scientific Name
Asclepias syriaca
