PROJECT MILKWEED – UT-LADY BIRD JOHNSON WILDFLOWER
CENTER
Submission Type: Poster
KAREN H. CLARY Ph.D., UT-Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, TX
MINNETTE MARR, Conservation Botanist UT-Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, TX
SUSAN PROSPERIE, Horticulturalist UT-Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, TX
SEAN WATSON, Nursery Manager UT-Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, TX
DAMON WAITT Ph.D., Executive Director North Carolina Botanic Garden, Chapel Hill, NC
Texas milkweeds are essential to monarch survival because monarchs must lay their eggs on Texas
milkweeds as they migrate north through Texas in the spring. In partnership with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, the UT-Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center undertook a pilot program in 2015 to
increase the abundance of native milkweeds. Project Milkweed collected and distributed seeds of native
Texas milkweeds to local growers to build capacity and grow and promote local milkweed availability.
In order to meet our project goals we:
•
Collected seeds of locally adapted ecotypes of milkweed (Asclepias spp.) within the
Texas/Oklahoma monarch migration corridor and distributed approximately one hundred fifty thousand
seeds to commercial and non-profit growers.
•
Publicized and developed a web-presence for Project Milkweed and pollinator conservation
outreach on our website at https://www.wildflower.org/project/pollinator-conservation and
https://www.wildflower.org/project/project-milkweed
•
Grew milkweeds and developed growing protocols and best practices for seedling propagation
and distribution.
•
Are safeguarding seeds of local ecotypes in national and Wildflower Center seed banks.
•
Are training citizen scientists to collect seed, grow plants and increase milkweed populations in
our communities.
•
Grew and donated 2,000 milkweed plants to Austin public school pollinator gardens in
partnership with the National Wildlife Federation.