Popular common name:
Wheel milkweed
Botanical Nomenclature:
Asclepias uncialis
Asclepias uncialis is a diminutive milkweed occurring in small colonies scattered along the eastern edge of the
southern Rocky Mountains. Occurrences are distributed in a westward trending arc from northeastern Colorado to
southeastern Arizona. Twenty extant occurrences within USDA Forest Service (USFS) Region 2 include one from the
Pawnee National Grassland and two from the Comanche National Grassland. Additional occurrences within Region
2 are known from Bureau of Land Management, Department of Defense, State of Colorado, and private lands. Ten
extant occurrences outside Region 2 are known from New Mexico, the Oklahoma panhandle, and Arizona. Decker, K. (2006, April 24). Asclepias uncialis Greene (wheel milkweed): a technical conservation assessment.
[Online]. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Region. Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/projects/scp/
assessments/asclepiasuncialis.pdf [2024, October 25].
Unique Attributes of
Asclepias uncialis
1 Flower Color
Pink and White
2 Plant Height
<1 foot
3 USDA Zones
6b-8a
4 Bloom Timing
March, April, May
5 Light Preference
Full Sun
6 Soil Moisture
7 Soil Substraite
Sandstone derived from limestone or fine textured soil with fine rick chips. Not rocky soils. Level.
8 Ecoregion I/II
9 Soil Moisture
10 Difficulty Rank
🔴 Challenging
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Little Monarchs
by Jonathan Case
A ten-year-old girl may be the only person who can save humanity from extinction in this exciting graphic novel adventure.
It’s been fifty years since a sun shift wiped out nearly all mammal life across the earth.
Towns and cities are abandoned relics, autonomous machines maintain roadways, and the world is slowly being reclaimed by nature. Isolated pockets of survivors keep to themselves in underground sites, hiding from the lethal sunlight by day and coming above ground at night.
10-year-old Elvie and her caretaker, Flora, a biologist, are the only two humans who can survive during daylight because Flora made an incredible discovery – a way to make an antidote to sun sickness using the scales from monarch butterfly wings. Unfortunately, it can only be made in small quantities and has a short shelf life.
Free to travel during the day, Elvie and Flora follow monarchs as they migrate across the former Western United States, constantly making new medicine for themselves while trying to find a way to make a vaccine they can share with everyone. Will they discover a way to go from a treatment to a cure and preserve what remains of humanity, or will their efforts be thwarted by disaster and the very people they are trying to save?
Little Monarchs is a new kind of graphic novel adventure—one that invites readers to take an intimate look at the natural world and the secrets hidden within. Elvie and Flora’s adventures take place in real locations marked panel-by-panel with coordinates and a compass heading. Curious readers can follow their travel routes and see the same landscapes—whether it be a secluded butterfly grove on the California coast or a hot-springs in the high desert. Through both comic narrative and journal entries, readers learn the basics of star navigation, how to tie useful knots, and other survival skills applicable in the natural world.
Creator Jonathan Case acquired the fact-based portion of Little Monarchs through intensive research and several expeditions to study monarchs across the western United States. Scientific support also came from the Xerces Society, the world leaders in monarch preservation.