Asclepias exaltataL.

poke milkweed

WFO wfo-0000551310 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Asclepias exaltata, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. a Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205832939
Asclepias exaltata, photographed by Will Kuhn
fig. b Will Kuhn, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 145899124
Asclepias exaltata, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. c Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200460985
Asclepias exaltata, photographed by Brian Finzel
fig. d Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 205650158
Asclepias exaltata, photographed by Christopher Zacharias
fig. e Christopher Zacharias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202104013
Asclepias exaltata, photographed by natalie
fig. f natalie, CC0 1.0 / obs. 144787718
Asclepias exaltata, photographed by natalie
fig. g natalie, CC0 1.0 / obs. 144786996
Asclepias exaltata, photographed by natalie
fig. h natalie, CC0 1.0 / obs. 144788802

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 1,434 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,434 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 6 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Asclepias acuminata Willd. ex Schult.
  • Asclepias bicknellii Vail
  • Asclepias klaprothiana Schult.
  • Asclepias nivea Sims
  • Asclepias phytolaccoides G.F.Lyon ex Pursh
  • Asclepias syriaca var. exaltata (L.) L.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.