USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



up. If placed in fresh water, they would soon re- 

 vive. 



When they wanted to, Indians knew quite well 

 where to go for material for fishing lines and nets 



— their knowledge of 

 wild plants packed 

 with useful fiber being 

 rather extensive. 

 One of the most 

 widely distributed of 

 these native fiber 

 plants is the so-called 

 Indian hemp {Apocy- 

 .num comndbmum, L.), 

 an herbaceous peren- 

 nial with a smooth, 

 milky- juiced, woody 

 stem two to four feet 

 high, and inconspicu- 

 ous, gre«nish-white flowers producing very slender 

 seed-pods about four inches long. It is found in 

 thickets and dampish ground from Canada to 

 Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The 

 usual preliminary preparation — as in the case of all 

 the wild fiber-plants, I believe — ^was to rot the stems 

 by soaking them in water. After that the outer 



212 



Indian Hemp 

 (Apooynum, carmaHrmm) 



