Abstract
The relationship between plants and their pollinators is usually regarded as a mutualism beneficial to both. In fact, it is a careful balance between mutualism and antagonism since the two parties have fundamentally different interests (reproduction and food, respectively). For the average flowering plant, only 0.4% of the pollen removed by the pollinator is delivered to stigmas of the same species; the other 99.6% is lost or eaten, a stark illustration of the hazard of relying on animal pollinators. Milkweeds have incredibly complex flowers that function as an effective countermeasure to the unreliability of animal pollinators. The average pollen transfer efficiency of milkweeds is 26%. In a letter to Asa Gray, Charles Darwin wrote that the pollen masses of Asclepias, a North American milkweed, were among the "facts which kept [him] longest scientifically orthodox" (adhering to creationism). This presentation will show that by placing milkweeds in their proper context in the evolutionary tree of life, we can understand how the milkweed pollination mechanism evolved, and overcome the initial incredulity expressed by Charles Darwin.

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