The milkweed lands An epic story of one plant, its nature and ecology

"The milkweed is a displaced citizen in its own land," begins entomologist Lee-Mäder, "kind of a vagrant, occupying the botanical equivalent of homeless encampments." Together with Beverly Duncan's detailed, utterly charming watercolors throughout, the author restores the milkweed to its rightful importance, from its use by Indigenous North Americans to treat coughs and congestion to its critical importance in the diet of monarch butterflies--and everything in between. Lee-Mäder touches on milkweed's representative species, use of its flowers in producing honey ("suggestive of quince, with a light tang") and its seedpod in filling life vests in the past, the insects that feed on and around its roots, its life cycle, the decimation of its populations by herbicides and its modern-day restoration, its various pollinators, and the foliage diseases that hit it the hardest. All in all, a compact, approachable, highly attractive primer on the topic.