What is this plant???

Question

I was in the mountains of north carolina, and I found something that was growing wild that reminds me of cotton or a silky substance when touched........but it will also remind you of dandelions.....the lightweight substance that fies around so easily!

I will try to post images up shortly

Thanks for the answers everyone, I looked up images of what all of you suggested, and it is INDEED milkweed...that is so awesome...and its so soft...I have like a whole bag of it....i love the feel of it......are there any uses of this plant?

Answer 1

sounds like milkweed to me, but I'll wait for your pics

great that you found out it is milkweed
here's the thing - you really should leave it where it's at - milkweed is getting scarce because people think it's a noxious weed and are killing it, but it's the only food that the monarch butterfly eats, and they are getting pretty scarce too. They just finished their migration to Mexico from Canada (imagine that) and likely your patch of milkweed might well be a stop for them there in the Carolina's.
google monarch butterfly - it's a fascinating story

Answer 2

Milkweed, awesome? Heh. Around here (Maine) it's a nuisance weed.
Uses: the flowers can be picked when they are still tightly closed (like broccoli) and prepared in the same way. I read somewhere that the silk can be used for insulation, like goose down. I've never tried using the silk, but I do harvest and eat the flowers every summer. Wild food is good fer ya!

Answer 3

Milkweed is the primary host plant for monarch butterflies. If you want to attract monarchs to breed in ur garden plant lots of milkweed. I'm not sure of any other important uses for this plant.

Answer 4

The only thing i can say is it may be another species of dandelion. It could also be a form of bluegrass or thistle. I found a site that you can look at that has images and describes plants. It also shows different associations with other plants, animals and where it may grow.

Answer 5

Dandelion gone to seed. Interesting that you write about it like it is pretty. HOw refreshing. I look at the dandelion seed the same way I look at blackberry vines trying to grow on my fence. Perhaps you could appreciate the beauty in that as well.
jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/html/teachphilos.html

Answer 6

Could be thistles or milkweed

Answer 7

milkweed possibly

Answer 8

Make a pillow or plant the seeds to attract butterflies and hummingbirds, or for medicinal use.
The tender new shoots are harvested and eaten in the northeast. I've heard eating these will turn your gray hair back to normal color.
Here is some interesting facts and pictures:
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Adult Monarchs (and many other butterfly species) love nectar-rich milkweed as a food source, but there is a more important reason for the Monarch's close attachment to milkweed. Milkweed is the only plant material that Monarch caterpillars can eat. Remove Monarch caterpillars from milkweed and they will starve; or they will eat other plant material, sicken, and then die. The scientific name for milkweed is Asclepias (pronounced as-KLEE-pea-us). Asclepias syriaca (common milkweed) is well known to most northeasterners. It grows along roadsides, in fields, and in open meadows. Producing sweet smelling mauve-pink flowers late June through July, common milkweed usually matures at about 48" high. Some people assume common milkweed to be the only milkweed species which exists. Actually, over 100 species of Asclepias grow in the USA, with over 200 different species growing worldwide.
Common milkweed is not the only Asclepias species which can be utilized as a food source for the monarch caterpillar. In reality, any Asclepias serves the purpose, although some species lure more egg-laying female monarchs than others.
Among the Asclepias species highly utilized by female monarchs for egg-laying are Asclepias curassavica (tropical milkweed, an annual) and Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed).
http://www.butterflybushes.com/milkweed.htm

More pictures of Milkweed plants:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=images&imgsz=&imgc=&vf=&va=milkweed&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8
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Asclepias

This genus consists of herbaceous plants with a milky juice, which are for the most part natives of America. Several species are cultivated for the sake of their showy flowers. All of them are more or less poisonous. Asclepias curassavica is employed in the West Indies as an emetic, and goes by the name of Ipecacuanha: the drug known in medicine by that name is derived from quite a different plant and must not be confused with it. A. tuberosa, the Butterfly-weed, has mild purgative properties, and promotes perspiration and expectoration. A. syriaca, a plant misnamed, as it is a native of America and Canada, is frequently to be met with in gardens; its dull red flowers are very fragrant, and the young shoots are eaten as asparagus in Canada, where a sort of sugar is also prepared from the flowers, while the silk-like down of the seeds is employed to stuff pillows. Some of the species furnish excellent fibre, which is woven into muslins, and in certain parts of India is made into paper.
In Hindu mythology, Soma - the Indian Bacchus- and one of the most important of the Vedic gods, is a personification of the Soma plant, A. acida, from which an intoxicating milky juice is squeezed. All the 114 hymns of the ninth book of the Rig Veda are in his praise. The preparation of the Soma juice was a very sacred ceremony and the worship of the god is very old. The true home of the plant was fabled to be in heaven, Soma being drunk by gods as well as men, and it is under its influence that Indra is related to have created the universe and fixed the earth and sky in their place. In postVedic literature, Soma is a regular name for the moon, which is regarded as being drunk by the gods and so waning, till it is filled up again by the Sun. In both the Rig Veda and Zend Avesta, Soma is the king of plants; in both, it is a medicine which gives health, long life and removes death.

The three species of Asclepias most used in medicine are the Calotropis procera, A. tuberosa (Pleurisy root) and A. Incarnata (Swamp Milkweed).

It is a very common roadside weed in the eastern and central states of North America, where it is called 'Silkweed,' from the silky down which surmounts the seed, being an inch or two in length, and which has been used for making hats and for stuffing beds and pillows. Attempts have been made to use it as a cotton substitute. Both in France and Russia it has had textile use. The fibres of the stem, prepared in the same manner as those of hemp and flax, furnish a very long, fine thread, of a glossy whiteness.

---Medicinal Action and Uses---The plant is used medicinally in the United States for the anodyne properties of its root and its rhizome and root have been employed successfully, like those of A. tuberosa, both in powder and infusion, in cases of asthma and typhus fever attended with catarrh, producing expectoration and relieving cough and pain. It has also been used in scrofula with great success.

---Constituents---It has a very milky juice, which is used as a domestic application to warts. The juice has a faint smell and subacid taste and an acid reaction. It contains a crystalline substance of a resinous character, closely allied to lactucone and called Asclepione; also wax-like, fatty matter, caoutchouc, gum, sugar, salts of acetic acid and other salts.

Besides the above-named species, various other species of the genus have been used medicinally.

An indigenous North American species A. verticillata (Linn.), is used in the Southern States as a remedy in snake bites and the bites of venomous insects. Twelve fluid ounces of a saturated decoction are said to cause an anodyne and sudorific effect, followed by gentle sleep.

From A. vincetoxicum (Linn.), 'TamePoison,' besides the glucoside Asclepiadin said closely to resemble emetine in its physiological properties, the glucoside Vincetoxir has been isolated. The root of this species sometimes occurs in commercial Senega Root (Polygala Senega).

An infusion of its root was formerly recommended in dropsical cases and disorders peculiar to women, as well as for promoting perspiration in fevers, measles and other eruptive complaints, but is now much less used.

A. curas-savica (Blood-weed and Redhead) is also called in the West Indies 'Bastard Ipecacuanha.'

It is a native of the West Indies, abounding especially in Nevis and St. Kitts.

Both root and expressed juice are emetic, the former in the dose of 20 to 40 grains, the latter in that of a fluid ounce.

They are also cathartic and vermifuge in somewhat smaller doses (Amer. Journ. Ph. XIX, 19). The juice, made into a syrup, is given as a powerful anthelmintic to children in the West Indies. The plant is used by the negroes as an emetic and the root as a purgative .

According to the Kew Bulletin, 1897 this plant has insecticidal properties, being especially obnoxious to fleas. The rooms infected are thoroughly swept with rough brooms made from the weed and the pests are said to disappear. D. St. Cyr commends it in phthisis (Ph. Journ., 1903, 714).
http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/a/ascle072.html

Answer 9

it could be milkweed i suppose

Answer 10

we have always called em cat tails in the south

jan