Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) growing in the prairie at Chicago Botanic Garden, July 3, 2009
I ran across this photo of butterfly weed as I cleaned out my iPhoto library to prepare for an onslaught of photos I expect to have from an upcoming trip to Tunisia. Two of my wildflower books feature this showy member of the milkweed family on their covers, and it's one of my favorite prairie flowers.
Butterfly weed's five recurved petals and five hoods model that of other milkweed flowers, but it does not produce the milky juice that other milkweeds do. Flowers range from deep yellow to brick red. Stems and leaves are hairy, and seeds, which form in a spindle-shaped pod, have a silky floss to aid in dispersal by the wind.
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Another odd word often attached to a wildlfower is "false." For instance, there are a rue anemone and a false rue anemone. The false in false rue anemone means that although the flower and leaves resemble rue anemone, it's a different species that was likely discovered and named after rue anemone.
Some plants were named for parts of the body because they resembled a body part and often were thought to provide a cure for that part of a body. This is called the doctrine of signatures. Two of my favorite early woodland wildflowers, hepatica (leaf shaped like a human liver) and bloodroot (root oozes a bright red juice when cut or bruised), fall into this category.
From Wikipedia:
"The doctrine of signatures was further spread by the writings of Jakob Böhme (1575 - 1624), who suggested that God marked objects with a sign, or 'signature', for their purpose. For instance, a plant bearing parts that resembled human body parts, animals, or other objects had useful relevance to those parts, animals or objects. The 'signature' may also be identified in the environments or specific sites in which plants grew."