Orange Butterfly Weed, Kansas Photo Print

"Orange Butterfly Weed, Flint Hills, Kansas" by Catherine Sherman. The brilliant orange of the butterfly weed, a milkweed, stands out among the thousands of wildflowers in the tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills of central Kansas. This section of prairie is part of the rough of a golf course, left in its natural state. Asclepias tuberosa, the butterfly weed, is a species of milkweed native to eastern and southwestern North America. It is commonly known as butterfly weed because of the butterflies that are attracted to the plant by its colour and its copious production of nectar. It is also a larval food plant of the queen and monarch butterflies, as well as the dogbane tiger moth, milkweed tussock moth, and the unexpected cycnia. It also attracts hummingbirds, and bees and other insects.