common milkweed

Asclepias syriaca · Apocynaceae · all Asclepias records · also called Milkweed (Common) · Wikipedia

Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Range evidence places Asclepias syriaca in both native and introduced contexts. This biogeographic distinction leads the scene and stays explicit for common milkweed.

The plant is on-list in the evidence table, while the fire-source pack remains limited evidence. The accepted rows keep those two conclusions distinct from the range account.

The related plants section and genus collection provide comparison beyond this species. Those routes do not inherit the native-versus-introduced split, on-list conclusion, or limited evidence depth. This keeps comparison available while preserving the selected facts at their original scope here.

Form: perennial
Light: Full sun
Water need: low
Rated in: northeastern Minnesota

On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence: Fire-resistant — location does not change the cited classification.
Fire-performance conditions
Fire ecology context
Placement evidence: 1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions: northeastern Minnesota
Maintenance

Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · Official scoped edition
- Northeastern Minnesota (MN footprint); partial normalized coverage · 2017-01-01
  Dovetail applies the UF/IFAS flammability key to northeastern Minnesota natives and publishes placement for 38 exact source owners. FireApproved exposes those rows only as northeastern Minnesota regional context and preserves the 3-to-30-foot versus beyond-30-foot source placement.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution: Documented in AL, AR, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Native range: Current cited native range in AR, CT, DC, DE, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, SD, TN, VA, VT, WI, WV.
Introduced / established: 6 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness: Documented range 4–9.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
Seed-list status
Reported invasive here
Broader regional context
Federal context

How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

Native and introduced range evidence

These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval. Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.

Current native

32

exact source areas

Current introduced

6

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

32 native source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Arkansas (AR)
Connecticut (CT)
District of Columbia (DC)
Delaware (DE)
Iowa (IA)
Illinois (IL)
Indiana (IN)
Kansas (KS)
Kentucky (KY)
Massachusetts (MA)
Maryland (MD)
Maine (ME)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
Missouri (MO)
Montana (MT)
North Carolina (NC)
North Dakota (ND)
Nebraska (NE)
New Hampshire (NH)
New Jersey (NJ)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Oklahoma (OK)
Pennsylvania (PA)
Rhode I. (RI)
South Dakota (SD)
Tennessee (TN)
Virginia (VA)
Vermont (VT)
Wisconsin (WI)
West Virginia (WV)

6 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04

Alabama (AL)
Georgia (GA)
Louisiana (LA)
Mississippi (MS)
Oregon (OR)
South Carolina (SC)

The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern Minnesota (Firewise) · record table-2-row-19 · 2017 · as of 2026-08-26

4–9 explicit range · whole zone precision · source stated

Source taxon: Asclepias syriaca · exact match.

Source location: Table 2 row 19, Hardiness Zones column.

Where its sources say to plant it

Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating. They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.

Landscaping for Wildfire Defensible Space in Northeastern…: plantable 3-30 ft from a building [Dovetail Partners planting distance] (with its recommendation)

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Last verified 2026-08-23. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · Wikipedia · ITIS

Asclepias syriaca (Milkweed (Common)). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/asclepias-syriaca/. Last verified 2026-08-23.