Swamp Milkweed Pods

I have a special kind of plant for you today. This plant is called Swamp Milkweed. I have actually been showing this plant to you for awhile now without knowing exactly what it was. Make no mistake, I knew it was a milkweed plant, but I didn't know what kind it was, and I didn't know it grew pods.

I really thought this plant was destroyed after some of the storms we have had. I walked past and saw it growing but I just didn't recognize the leaves. Common Milkweed has fatter leaves than this Swamp Milkweed. And the pods also look different. These new pods look smoother than the spiny common variety. I really thought the pods were just more leaves.

These two photos above are from a few of my past posts. You can click on the pictures to see the posts. The first one shows a bumblebee on the blooms of the plant. I knew it was a different kind of milkweed than the Common Milkweed, but back then I didn't know what kind it was. I was just so proud at the time of the pictures of the bee.

The second picture gave me my first clue. When I first saw what I thought was a gigantic mutated ladybug, it turned out to be a bug called a Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetle. That gave me my first clue of the name of this plant. I didn't bother to investigate further because, like I said before, I thought the storms wiped out this plant. But now I know that's not true at all.

This is what first showed me that there were indeed pods on this plant, and that it was actually the same milkweed plant I had been watching before. The pods have begun breaking open so the seeds could escape. As far as I remember, the seeds on the different types look similar, but I could be wrong.

A few things that differentiate the Swamp Milkweed from other types of milkweed are it's narrow lance shaped leaves. The common milkweed leaves are much fatter. The swamp milkweed also has striking pink blooms that are much more colorful than common milkweed. And like I said before, these have slender, smooth pods and stems, while the others are different.

As the name indicates, swamp milkweed grows near swamps, wet meadows, ditches, edges of streams, and shorelines of ponds and lakes. I found the plant in my pictures growing near the dam of the lake at one of my nature parks. So I guess it would fit the description pretty well.

I've had a good time following the progress of this particular plant, and I didn't even know that's what I was doing. The plant just happened to be in a place I like to visit very often. But  that's what happens when you're an Everyday Adventurer, so many good things like this happen without you even having to search for them.