Tropical Butterfly Weed Seeds

If you think the native orange-flowered butterfly weed is lovely, just wait until you grow these tricolored blooms from its South American cousin. Tropical Butterfly Weed offers a very long season of bloom, irresistible attraction for pollinators from hummingbirds to butterflies to bees, and large flowers just right for garden, container, and even home.

Tropical Butterfly Weed (Asclepias curassavica) is a tender perennial that will thrive for several years as a houseplant or for one glorious year as an annual outdoors. (It will re-seed itself in zones 9-11.) It is shrubbier than the native butterfly weed, reaching 2 to 3 feet high and up to 2 feet wide with excellent branching and masses of flowers. The blooms are followed by quite handsome seedpods, about 3 to 4 inches long and very slender—great for fresh or dried bouquets.

As you might expect from a plant whose common name includes the word “weed,” it’s very easy to grow. Give it full sunshine to light shade—bright light indoors—and any well-drained soil and Tropical Butterfly Weed will reward you with its brilliant blooms from early summer until well into fall. The sap of this plant is poisonous, so deer and rabbits leave it alone. And pollinators just can’t stay away.

Tropical Butterfly Weed is ideal for containers of all kinds, indoors and out. If growing it outdoors, cut the plant back before the first hard frost and bring it inside for winter—it will flourish. And it’s a fine presence in the vegetable garden, bringing pollinators on the wing and keeping nibbling animals at bay. You just can’t go wrong with this tropical beauty.

For the longest season of bloom, start the seeds indoors about 8 to 10 weeks before the last spring frost. Transplant when all danger of frost has passed. Keep the plant well watered when young—it becomes quite drought tolerant as it reaches maturity in early summer. Then sit back and enjoy the parade of blooms and seedpods.