MilkweedUSA

Native Subspecies of Butterfly Weed

Rolfs’s Milkweed

Asclepias tuberosa subsp. rolfsii (Britton ex Vail) Woodson

The Florida sandhill plant, confined to deep sand on the central ridges of peninsular Florida and southern Georgia. Flora of North America gives its flowering season as year-round, which only a handful of United States milkweeds manage.

How to tell it apart

Small narrow leaves with wavy, crisped margins and arrowhead-shaped bases. The whole plant is shorter, 15 to 70 cm, and it grows in deep dry sand.

Compare with subsp. interior and subsp. tuberosa. 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

Reported in error from Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia. Plants on sandy sites in southern South Carolina sit between this and the other two subspecies and may belong here.

Alaska: not recorded Maine: not recorded Vermont: not recorded New Hampshire: not recorded Washington: not recorded Idaho: not recorded Montana: not recorded North Dakota: not recorded Minnesota: not recorded Illinois: not recorded Wisconsin: not recorded Michigan: not recorded New York: not recorded Massachusetts: not recorded Rhode Island: not recorded Oregon: not recorded Nevada: not recorded Wyoming: not recorded South Dakota: not recorded Iowa: not recorded Indiana: not recorded Ohio: not recorded Pennsylvania: not recorded New Jersey: not recorded Connecticut: not recorded California: not recorded Utah: not recorded Colorado: not recorded Nebraska: not recorded Missouri: not recorded Kentucky: not recorded West Virginia: not recorded Virginia: not recorded Maryland: not recorded Delaware: not recorded Arizona: not recorded New Mexico: not recorded Kansas: not recorded Arkansas: not recorded Tennessee: not recorded North Carolina: not recorded South Carolina: not recorded District of Columbia: not recorded Texas: not recorded Oklahoma: not recorded Louisiana: not recorded Mississippi: not recorded Alabama: not recorded Georgia: recorded Hawaii: not recorded Florida: recorded
Recorded in 2 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

Rolfs’s Milkweed blooms nearly year-round in frost-free areas, peaking in April and May. Plants reach 6 in–2.3 ft.

Other names

This plant has also been published as Asclepias rolfsii. 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). Rolfs’s Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa subsp. rolfsii). Retrieved DATE, from https://milkweedusa.com/species/butterfly-weed/rolfsii/
MLA "Rolfs’s Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa subsp. rolfsii)." Milkweed USA, 2026, https://milkweedusa.com/species/butterfly-weed/rolfsii/. Accessed DATE.
Chicago Milkweed USA. "Rolfs’s Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa subsp. rolfsii)." Last modified 2026-08-01. Accessed DATE. https://milkweedusa.com/species/butterfly-weed/rolfsii/.
BibTeX @misc{milkweedusa_speciesbutterflyweedrolfsii, title = {Rolfs’s Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa subsp. rolfsii)}, author = {{Milkweed USA}}, year = {2026}, url = {https://milkweedusa.com/species/butterfly-weed/rolfsii/}, note = {Accessed DATE} }