Milkweed: and other bast fibers

by Lili Pintea-Reed

Sorry to be a couple days late, but I was very busy with my One Woman Fiber Art Show! Here's a picture for those who couldn't get here. No, I'm not in it..

One of the pleasures of regularly hiking in the woods finding wonderful surprises. The last few times we hiked we found naturally "retted" (rotted) milkweed plants. Like flax and hemp milkweed stems have bast fibers which can be used. To remove them they must have the outer "bark" of the plant removed. One can do this by intentionally rotting off the outer coating, or let nature do it. If you hike along milkweed paths now you'll see the old skeletons of last years plants with silvery fiber clinging to the inner pith. See photo:

and more closely:

These are the bast fibers of the milkweed. They reside between the bark and the pith layer. They can be pulled off and combed to remove the last bark fibers. The resulting fiber looks like:

Colonial people used it for lamp and candle wick as it has a much higher mineral content than flax or hemp. Thus it burns more slowly. As a fiber it is a bit itchy, again because of the mineral content.

You can also spin the silk from the seed pods , which is softer -- but still itchy!

So pick a bit of natural retted milkweed and then process some of the harder to produce fibers like flax and in Canada (and other non_USA countries) --fiber hemp.

Check out these sites for information. Flax of Canada http://www.flaxcouncil.ca/hisindex.htm Belgium Flax http://www.rootsweb.com/~belghist/Flande... North Dakota Flax http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/plantsc... Flax and Hemp Production http://www.cannabis.com/untoldstory/mech...

Lili

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