Hi all! We bought this plant at our local garden center in France. It has been in a container on our west-facing balcony all year. It started out smallish, then went bushy when we "summered" it at a friend's farm for July/August. Toward the end of the summer & still now (we are zone 8/9 in Brittany), it has grown seed pods, which open & release white flying fluffy things with very small brown flattish seeds. I've gathered the seeds to try to plant them next year, but I don't know what to label the seeds! Please help me ID this plant... I sent an email to a friend because we'd seen a plant with these flowers in a gardening catalog, but unfortunately the leaves are not the right shape. The comments on the photo are: left side, plant in the spring not long after we bought it; right side, plant a few weeks ago, going to seed. Thanks!
Looks like Asclepias curassavica. Common name Mexican Butterfly weed. http://images.google.com/imgres?img...gb:IE-ContextMenu&rlz=1I7SUNA_en-GB&sa=N&um=1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepias_curassavica
wintering Asclepias curassavica It sure does look like that, I should have thought of the milkweed pods! I see that this is a considered a perennial. Do you think that I could leave the pot on my balcony over the winter? Or if I put it in our attic for the winter, would it go into hibernation? Any ideas about this would be great, we really enjoyed the plant, and anything that attracts bees and butterflies is fine by me. We are in Brittany, so zone 8/9. We don't get much below-freezing weather, but it is DAMP, and quite windy. Frost is coming soon so I am trying to take care of everything for the winter. I have some coconut stuff to wrap bases, and this plant is in a frost-proof pot... Thanks!!!!
If the plant's roots never freeze it could remain outdoors. It won't go into dormancy in cold storage being a tropical. Might work best to bring it in on frosty days and out once the weather warms enough to go outside without a jacket.
