milkweed
any of several plants that secrete a milky juice or latex, especially those of the genus Asclepias, as A. syriaca.: Compare milkweed family.
any of various other plants having a milky juice, as certain spurges.
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Origin of milkweed
1Words Nearby milkweed
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use milkweed in a sentence
As a Midwesterner who grew up among prairies filled with milkweed, I balked at such fearmongering.
Environment Report: Pipeline Plan Takes a Small Step Forward (With Some Drama) | MacKenzie Elmer | November 23, 2020 | Voice of San DiegoThe article seems to blanket all milkweed as killer, but that’s just not true.
Environment Report: Pipeline Plan Takes a Small Step Forward (With Some Drama) | MacKenzie Elmer | November 23, 2020 | Voice of San DiegoAnyone who wants to take monarchs and milkweed for these purposes would have to apply for special permits.
Migrating monarchs are in trouble. Here’s how we can all help them. | By D. André Green II/The Conversation | September 23, 2020 | Popular-ScienceThis global network has helped restore not only monarchs' summer breeding habitat by planting milkweed, but also general pollinator habitat by planting nectaring flowers across North America.
Migrating monarchs are in trouble. Here’s how we can all help them. | By D. André Green II/The Conversation | September 23, 2020 | Popular-ScienceIf it is female, she will lay her eggs on milkweeds, and the cycle will start again.
Pesticides contaminate most food of western U.S. monarchs | Rebecca E. Hirsch | August 17, 2020 | Science News For Students
The accompanying use of these poisons has proven deadly to milkweed.
Last Flight of the Monarchs? A Plea for Help for the Dying Butterflies | Michael Daly | February 14, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTBut the biggest factor is thought to be an accompanying decrease in milkweed, where the Monarchs lay their eggs along the way.
Last Flight of the Monarchs? A Plea for Help for the Dying Butterflies | Michael Daly | February 14, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTOther supporters of the milkweed effort include Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
Last Flight of the Monarchs? A Plea for Help for the Dying Butterflies | Michael Daly | February 14, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTGraywolf Press is there, along with milkweed, Coffee House Press, Rain Taxi magazine.
Our milkweed is tenacious of life; its roots lie deep, as if to get away from the plow, but it seldom infests cultivated crops.
A Year in the Fields | John BurroughsYou are like pretty floating milkweed, you touch here and there in your travels.
Polly the Pagan | Isabel AndersonI can find no record that the down of milkweed (or of any other plant) was used.
Francis Drake and the California Indians, 1579 | Robert F. HeizerThe other man, even shorter, but slimmer, sauntered out of a bed of milkweed whither he had been catapulted.
The Dark Star | Robert W. ChambersThe creamy sap of the milkweed growing in the timothy meadow was drying up in the stem.
The Biography of a Prairie Girl | Eleanor Gates
British Dictionary definitions for milkweed
/ (ˈmɪlkˌwiːd) /
Also called: silkweed any plant of the mostly North American genus Asclepias, having milky sap and pointed pods that split open to release tufted seeds: family Asclepiadaceae: See also asclepias
any of various other plants having milky sap
orange milkweed another name for butterfly weed
another name for monarch (def. 3)
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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