| Author | Walter | |
| Distribution | SERNEC has a specimen from UNCC, examined online by the editors, that definitively documents the species for NC. It was collected in Brunswick County in 1991 and had been overlooked all these years. On the other hand, a specimen in another herbarium, collected in 1982 from a different coastal county, is not of this species.
This is a species of the Deep South, occurring from extreme southeastern NC south to central FL, then west to eastern TX; but it has much of its range northward in the Mississippi River region northward to southern IN and southeastern MO. | |
| Abundance | Obviously very rare, close to the SC border. It occurs in many or most coastal counties in SC, and thus its discovery in Brunswick County is not unexpected. State-ranked at S1 | |
| Habitat | This is a species of milkweed found primarily in swamp forests, often in some standing water and normally in full shade. It also can grow in wet bottomlands, ditches, and other wet places.
| |
| Phenology | Blooms from June to August, and fruits from August to September. | |
| Identification | This species grows to about 1.5 feet tall, usually in a colony or otherwise a tight group of plants. It has numerous pairs of lanceolate leaves, with a short petiole. The leaves are dark green, entire, and about 4 inches long but only 2/3-wide wide, tapering to a slender tip. It has typically 2-3 small but showy flower clusters (umbels) from the upper leaf axils and summit of the stem, each looking like a white golf ball in appearance, about 1.5-inches across. The many flowers are bright white, making the plants very conspicuous in the often dark and dank places where they grow -- when in full bloom. It is hoped that this species still survives in NC, though it might be necessary to find it from a canoe along a small blackwater creek. Thankfully, it is found in many of SC's lower Coastal Plain counties, though you still might need waders to spot the plants. | |
| Taxonomic Comments | None
| |
| Other Common Name(s) | White Swamp Milkweed, White Milkweed | |
| State Rank | S1 | |
| Global Rank | G5 | |
| State Status | [SR-P] | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | | |
| USACE-emp | | |
