Medicinal Herbs: Showy Milkweed

I found this plant yesterday and fell very attached to it. The flowers are a beautiful lavender color, and are rubbery rather than thin an delicate. It's a tall plant with ball forms of clustered small flowers. It's called Showy Milkweed and here is it's traditional usage:

Edibility:

Showy Milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) was boiled and eaten as a vegetable in the mid-west and eastern regions by indigenous tribes of America. The flowers, stems, and leaves were also eaten raw, while the buds were often boiled for soups with meat. Almost all tribes of America were recorded as using the sap as a chewing gum, by boiling it down to a sticky substance and adding salmon or deer fat.

Medicinally:

Showy Milkweed sap was used as a cleaning or healing agent for cuts, sores, warts, or ringworm. The silky hairs would be burned away from the seeds, then ground down into a salve for sores. The seeds would be boiled in a small amount of liquid, which would be applied to soak rattlesnake bites and draw out the poison. Tea made from the roots was to aid in alleviating a measles rash, or curing a cough, or even cure rheumatism when applied like a wash. When the root was mashed with some liquid it could reduce swelling.

Interestingly:

Tribes would use the fibers of the plant's stalk for weaving ropes and cloth. By extracting the fibers from dried stalks via a whacking method, the fibers were twisted together to form cord. This cord also formed nets and traditional ceremonial garb.

Here's the beautiful plant: