The natural healer plant Milkweed or Asclepius and it's many healing characteristics

The milkweed is a generic title for the Asclepias genus and it is interesting to look at both the healing or poisoness properties of the plant and the myth that surrounds it's genus name. The Asclepius genus consists of well over 100 species which can be found growing in several ecosystems and they do have a tendancy to become more of an hindrance than a benefit at times.

This brings us back to the genus name of Asclepias. This name was given to the Wildweed by Carolus Linnaeus in the 18th century. Asclepias is a reference to an old Greek mythological figure who started out as a mortal demi-god, the son of Apollo and the mortal mother Caronis.

It's a tragic story where a pregnant mother is murdered by a jealous husband. The child is saved from the womb and left in the care of a centaur who is skilled in the arts of healing with natural remedies and who goes on to teach the young Asclepias to heal others. This healing with herbs story goes much further where Asclepias finds an herbal remedy that allows him to resurrect the dead. This power of anastasia insults the highest lord of the pantheon, Zeus, who looks at Asclepias as an hindrance to his monopoly of the pantheon and goes on to kill his rival with a thunderbolt. But this is just the short version of a great story of healing and corruption for the sake of control and power.

It however gives a romantic overtone to the milkweed and almost portrays it to an organism found in the ecosystem of nature that has some serious healing or destructive powers.

Lets have a look at some characteristics of the Asclepias or Milkweed.

Insects, bees, moths and other herbivores love the milkweed for it's ability to shed a milky nectar which is full of alkaloids and latex with traces of caoutchouc amongst other compounds.

Some sources credit the milkweed for having medicinal qualities that will help resolve such ailments as warts, asthma, bronchitis, kidney stones, parasitic worms, or even as a laxative or tonic for abdominal conditions. In extreme naturopathy and folk medicine it as been administered on certain cancers.

The juicy nectar of certain Asclepias species was used as a sweetener and the sap as an anecdote to poison ivy exposure.

As a pest repellant milkweed repels wireworms.

The Monarch butterfly while in it's larva stage are completely dependent on the milkweed for their food.

The fibers of the milkweed have been used in rope making and some tests have been made to try to extract the caoutchouc or rubber.

The poisoness aspect of certain Asclepias species also has some interesting historical points such as having been applied to arrowheads before a hunt. The reactive agent here is a cardiac glycosimide poison. The same poison when consumed in large quantities by animals can be fatal.

The toxicity of the Milkweed can cause dermatitis or skin inflammation in certain individuals.

The milkweed is a perenial therefore it returns to the ecosystem each year. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on circumstances.

For gardeners who are looking to attract Monarch butterflies the Asclepias will do the job.

However crop growers and cattle farmers find the milkweed to be a hindrance and some go to great lengths to rid their fields of the Asclepias.

Certain ecologically minded people find this to be a travesty stating that the disappearance of the milkweed will mean the disappearance of the Monarch butterfly. Another point to consider in the preservation of the milkweed is the bee population. Bees as stated before are consumers of the juicy white nectar of this weed. Where would we be without bees.

The great physicist Albert Einstein once stated that humanity would be extinct within a few years if the bee population was totally wiped out.

Now that's something to consider when thinking of the Asclepias.

From a man of old who found the secret of immortality and of anastasia and who was murdered by a supremecist who would do anything to maintain control over mortals we get a plant called the Milkweed which is required by some forms of life to even exist.

The story of Alclepias tells us that as a consolation for his human death he was risen from the rank of a mortal demi-god to the rank of an immortal. 

That's terribly romantic but it certainly could leave the rest of us mortals wondering what magic herbal remedy Asclepius had discovered that could challenge the overlord of the pantheon.

So watch were you grow your Milkweeds for you never know when a thunderbolt can hit you.