MilkweedUSA

Native Subspecies of Butterfly Weed

Eastern Butterfly Weed

Asclepias tuberosa subsp. tuberosa L.

The Atlantic coastal plain plant, and the one Linnaeus named. It runs inland up the river valleys east of the Mississippi and is especially common in Tennessee.

How to tell it apart

Leaf bases taper into the stalk or are bluntly rounded rather than squared or heart-shaped, and the leaf tips are blunter. Plants are 45 to 80 cm.

Compare with subsp. interior and subsp. rolfsii. Everything else about the plant, including how to grow it and what it is worth to monarchs, is on the butterfly weed page.

Where it grows

Mainly a coastal plain plant east of the Appalachians. Records well inland, in Arkansas and Illinois for instance, may be garden escapes rather than native populations. It is uncommon in Rhode Island and of conservation concern there.

Alaska: not recorded Maine: recorded Vermont: recorded New Hampshire: recorded Washington: not recorded Idaho: not recorded Montana: not recorded North Dakota: not recorded Minnesota: not recorded Illinois: recorded Wisconsin: not recorded Michigan: not recorded New York: recorded Massachusetts: recorded Rhode Island: recorded Oregon: not recorded Nevada: not recorded Wyoming: not recorded South Dakota: not recorded Iowa: not recorded Indiana: recorded Ohio: recorded Pennsylvania: recorded New Jersey: recorded Connecticut: recorded California: not recorded Utah: not recorded Colorado: not recorded Nebraska: not recorded Missouri: not recorded Kentucky: recorded West Virginia: recorded Virginia: recorded Maryland: recorded Delaware: recorded Arizona: not recorded New Mexico: not recorded Kansas: not recorded Arkansas: recorded Tennessee: recorded North Carolina: recorded South Carolina: recorded District of Columbia: recorded Texas: not recorded Oklahoma: not recorded Louisiana: not recorded Mississippi: recorded Alabama: recorded Georgia: recorded Hawaii: not recorded Florida: recorded
Recorded in 26 states. Shading is generalized to whole states.

Distribution follows the Flora of North America treatment, United States only. Butterfly Weed as a whole is recorded in 43 states.

Flowering

Eastern Butterfly Weed blooms April to September, peaking in June and July. Plants reach 1.5 ft–2.6 ft.

Other names

This plant has also been published as Asclepias decumbens. Those names refer to the same taxon and you will meet them in older floras and in some databases.

References

The description, distribution and synonymy here follow Mark Fishbein’s treatment of Asclepias in Flora of North America vol. 14 (2023).

Cite this page

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APA Milkweed USA. (2026). Eastern Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa subsp. tuberosa). Retrieved DATE, from https://milkweedusa.com/species/butterfly-weed/tuberosa/
MLA "Eastern Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa subsp. tuberosa)." Milkweed USA, 2026, https://milkweedusa.com/species/butterfly-weed/tuberosa/. Accessed DATE.
Chicago Milkweed USA. "Eastern Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa subsp. tuberosa)." Last modified 2026-08-01. Accessed DATE. https://milkweedusa.com/species/butterfly-weed/tuberosa/.
BibTeX @misc{milkweedusa_speciesbutterflyweedtuberosa, title = {Eastern Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa subsp. tuberosa)}, author = {{Milkweed USA}}, year = {2026}, url = {https://milkweedusa.com/species/butterfly-weed/tuberosa/}, note = {Accessed DATE} }