Cordage Plants
Dogbane, Milkweed, Basswood, Slippery Elm
Handrolled cordage is beautiful to look at, pleasant to handle, and surprisingly easy to make, once you get the hang of it. Making cordage is also a useful skill, since most of us don’t carry string around with us outdoors, and there are times one needs it unexpectedly. Anything long and slender can be used to make cordage, but some substances are stronger than others. Tall grass will break if you try to bend and tie it, but when twisted into string, it will stay intact when used for bundling something you want to carry or binding a leaf or cloth around an injury.
If you need your binding to bear weight, you need a stronger substance, such as the inner bark of dogbane, milkweed, nettle, or trees such as basswood, mulberry, or slippery elm. The Indians also used the roots of hickory and other trees. Strong cordage comes from dogbane, slippery elm, basswood, and milkweed. Other plants will make string of intermediate strength, including stalks of common evening primrose and sagebrush, leaves of yucca and cattail. (Another important cordage source is deer sinew.)
While tree barks may be harvested at any time, weeds are at their most fibrous when they have dried out in the fall.
Milkweed bark rots quickly, so the stems have to be taken when they are still turning from green to brown, at the same time that the pods are opening and dispensing their seeds. Most people are familiar with the paisley-shaped pods and their fluffy white contents, an easy means of identification in the autumn.
Dogbane is a related plant whose fibers are stronger and easier to work with. (Note that dogbane is quite toxic and should not be taken internally.) When young it closely resembles milkweed, with opposite, oblong leaves up to four inches long, and a similar white sap. Dogbane later develops branches off the main stalk, while the common milkweed does not. Unlike milkweed’s big balls of dusky pink blossoms, the tiny white to pink flowers of dogbane are not showy. The seeds are transported by silky parachutes, like those of milkweed, but dogbane seeds form within a pair of long, slender, dark brown, caliper-like pods, attached at one or both ends. Dried dogbane stems are not speckled like milkweed’s, but have a smooth, reddish-brown bark.
Slippery elm is a tree whose leaves are irregularly sawtoothed, with small teeth sometimes occurring along the edges of large teeth, and a rough, scratchy surface. The bark is soft, with sometimes flaky ridges.
Basswood trees have heart-shaped, coarsely toothed leaves with irregular bases. Flowers and seeds are borne individually on bracts, leaflike structures shaped, in this case, like small tongue depressors. Buds are dark reddish, gooey when chewed.
The article How to Make Cordage explains how to process the plants to extract the fibrous parts and how to roll cordage. For more on tree identification, see Identifying Features of Trees.
See also Tom Brown’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival by Tom Brown, Jr. (New York: Berkley Books), 1983,
Dogbane pods
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Milkweed pods and seeds
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