Rush Milkweed or Ajamete

Rush milkweed is a perennial, and it’s possible to find its blue-green stalks and creamy fruits and flowers adding color to a desert in summer when not much color exists. As you draw closer, be sure to look for the orange and black wings of a monarch butterfly, or the red and black of a herbivorous milkweed bug (pictured below) or a carnivorous assassin bug.

You might wonder why colorful bugs and butterflies can live openly in the desert with so many hungry birds nearby. Even when they are in the larvae stage, butterflies and milkweed bugs eat milkweed leaves, ingesting a toxin which is harmless to them but poisonous to birds. Any bird who takes one bite of a butterfly or milkweed bug quickly loses the desire to take another.

Rush milkweed has few if any leaves. It can be found in sandy washes or arroyos either near paved roads or draining mountains. It is also often seen in desert gardens.

Until 2006, the Asclepias or milkweed genus was part of the milkweed family, Asclepiadaceae, but this family has been merged into the Apocynaceae, or dogbane family of shrubs, vines and trees with a milky sap.