Hey, I almost forgot about today's topic!
I wanted to give you the opportunity to name a plant. Let me describe it for you.
It is a vine that grows over all but sandy soil. The leaves are shaped like grape leaves but get up to a foot across. It bears no fruit or flowers. It will, however, spread through runners and broken vine pieces. It climbs up trees and has reddish-brown colored roots that grip the tree or other surface it is climbing up. It will strangle the trees it climbs up, like Virginia creeper. It is harvested and retted in water for the bast fibers which are used in rope making. Unlike hemp or flax, this fiber has a uniform and long staple length. The water from the retting process can be used to dye wool a dark brown color. When combined with black walnut, the liquid will dye most fabrics black, except for that which would have been made from the fibers of this plant. That just turns brown from the black walnut.
Undyed, the fiber is tan color similar to old hemp. The rope made from this plant's fiber is used for one thing officially, nooses. Unofficially, it is braided into hemp ropes to make them stronger and used to make sailcloth in the southern regions of Evandar and Ranyth. It is mentioned by is by-name 'sail weed' there.
My question for you is, what does everyone else call it?
No comments:
Post a Comment