2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Asklepias (lat. Asclepias) - light-loving flowering perennial from the Kutrovy family. Other names are cotton wool, gusset.
Description
Asklepias is a medium-sized bushes with rather strong non-branching shoots and hairy oval leaves. As a rule, the height of this plant is in the range from half a meter to eighty centimeters. And it can be either deciduous or evergreen!
Small pink flowers of asklepias gather in amazingly beautiful paniculate inflorescences. And these flowers smell very nice! And after some time, the formation of seed pods begins in their place, around which there are white seeds (open), abundantly covered with numerous "cotton" fibers - hence the Russian name of the plant (cotton wool) originates.
In total, the genus Asklepias has about one hundred and twenty species.
Where grows
Most often, asklepias can be found in the steppe zone.
Usage
Some varieties of asklepias are quite successfully cultivated as flowering ornamental plants - this is a real find for landscape design!
The milky juice of Asclepias, despite the fact that it is poisonous, has found its use in folk medicine - it, like celandine juice, is used to get rid of warts. Asclepias is also an excellent honey plant. The strong and pronounced smell of this handsome man invariably attracts a great variety of the most diverse insects - especially monarch butterfly asklepias love.
Growing and caring
It is best to plant asklepias in sunny areas, on garden soils characterized by normal moisture with a neutral or slightly acidic reaction. By the way, this amazing plant can be grown not only outdoors, but also in pots placed on terraces or balconies. If asklepias is planned to be grown in pots, the substrate for these purposes is prepared from leaf or sod land (50%), as well as from sand (25%) and peat (25%). Also, high-quality long-acting mineral fertilizers must be added to this substrate (thirty to forty grams of fertilizer are usually taken for each bucket of soil). And, importantly, a drainage layer with a thickness of three to seven centimeters must be laid on the bottom of each pot (it can be either pebbles or thoroughly washed expanded clay). As for the diameter of the pots, it should ideally be in the range from fourteen to fifteen centimeters to eighteen to twenty centimeters.
Watering the asklepias should be abundant (ideally with soft water), but you must constantly monitor that the water does not stagnate. However, the soil must be constantly moisturized! Also, during the flowering period, about once a month, asklepias should be pampered with good fertilizers.
For the winter, it is recommended to cover the asklepias with spruce branches - in this case, it will be much easier for him to overwinter. And this beautiful plant is usually transplanted in the spring, and for each transplant, a more spacious pot should be taken.
Asclepias is usually propagated either by sowing seeds, which is carried out before winter, or by dividing the bushes - it is done in late summer or spring. It is quite acceptable to resort to propagation by cuttings.
Sometimes whiteflies can attack Asclepias, but this scourge can usually be dealt with with the help of fungicides. Also, with insufficient watering, buds with leaves may begin to fall off in Asklepias, and a lack of lighting sometimes entails exposing and stretching its stems.
