09/18/2026
There are two places to find seeds for Asclepias albicans. The southwest desert, near the southern border in 104° heat and your mailbox. Whitestemmed milkweed seeds ship daily! Inventory is low.
https://www.growmilkweedplants.com/product-page/asclepias-albicans-whitestemmed-milkweed-seed
Some of yall know the desert milkweed (Asclepias subulata) but do you know the giant white-stemmed milkweed (Asclepias albicans)?
This succulent upright plant might remind you of desert milkweed, but picture a much more giant version. On average it gets to about 5-6’ tall, but in favorable conditions it reaches an incredible 10’ tall or more! Flowers anytime between winter and spring, usually in response to winter rains, with creamy-white flowers with black anthers, sometimes with a pink blush, fading yellow in ball-like clusters near and at the ends of tall stems. It seems to do most of its growing in the cool season—it is native to the western edge of the Sonoran Desert and the Mojave Desert which get most if not all of their precipitation in the cool season.
It can be distinguished from its close kin, A. subulata, by its fewer, longer, thicker, more noticeably waxy-blue stems, the very short nectar cups of the flowers, and its preference for rocky uplands rather than fine-textured substrates on playas, dunes or low sandy hummocks. There are known natural hybrids of Asclepias albicans and A. subulata, as well as a few hybrids in cultivation. We have a few of the hybrids in stock now too.
Full sun, low water, good drainage. Established plants are hardy to 20°F but young plants should be protected from frost.
As with most species of Asclepias, it is a larval food plant for the monarch and queen butterflies, and the flowers are nectar rich, attracting a multitude of nectar-seeking insects, especially tarantula hawks.
Used as a cathartic, an emetic, an eye medicine, for stomach disorders, for many other ailments, but it is also considered poisonous.
Asclepias is named for the Greek god of healing Asklepios, referring to the common medicinal use of plants in this genus, while albicans means white, referring to the white waxy coating on the stems of this species.
This desert milkweed prefers rocky, north-facing slopes of granitic ranges, although it also occurs on the walls of volcanic craters.; below 2,500 feet in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of California, Arizona, and Baja California and coastal Sonora with a disjunct population in Sinaloa.
