Modern textile production relies on environmentally intensive crops like cotton, and while more sustainable alternatives like flax and hemp exist, they are not native to North America. Native North American bast fiber plants remain under-researched despite their historical use by Indigenous peoples and their potential to support biodiversity and reduce agricultural inputs.

This paper examines native North American bast fiber plants for their potential to support sustainable textile production while preserving biodiversity. Drawing on ethnobotanical histories, craft and hobbyist literature review, and firsthand work with the plants themselves, the study identifies lesser-known native perennials that yield usable bast fibers and may offer environmental benefits when cultivated. Key findings include the discovery of spinnable fiber in Amsonia tabernaemontana and Baptisia australis, the viability of overwintered dogbane and milkweed stalks for harvesting, and the biodiversity value of cultivating native fiber plants with minimal agricultural input. Although these plants would likely produce less fiber per acre than established crops like flax or hemp, their habitat benefits may justify their use in integrated fiber systems. The paper proposes a model of small-scale, ecologically integrated fiber cultivation that prioritizes both material production and environmental stewardship.

Keywords: fiber plants, textiles, biodiversity, sustainable fiber

There are a variety of native-to-North America plant species that can be harvested for bast fiber for textile applications.¹ These plants have been tended and used by indigenous peoples for this purpose since colonial and presumably pre-contact times.²

Chippewa, Menominee, and Potawatomi people were observed to use fibers from species of the Apocynum (dogbane), Asclepias (milkweed), and Urticaceae (nettles) genera to craft cordage, nets, sewing thread, bags, and baskets.³ Outside of present-day Wisconsin, Cherokee, Luiseño, Mendocino, and Okanagan people, among many others, are recorded to have made garments from these textiles. It is important to state clearly that these peoples’ traditions as sovereign nations must be respected and honored in research involving these materials.

More recently, native North American bast fibers have been explored in craft contexts and by sustainable fiber advocates.^4–7 Notably, Wenner’s profile of native North American fiber plant species imagines an “integrated system that could make use of multiple types of bast fiber plants.”¹

The main groups of fiber-bearing plants that grow natively in North America are the dogbanes and milkweeds, Apocynum and Asclepias, and the nettle family, Urticaceae. In fact, species from these same genera have been used for fiber wherever they occur; for a few examples, Apocynum venetum and A. pictum in southern Europe and Asia;⁸ Urtica dioica in northern Europe and the British Isles;⁹ and Calotropis gigantea or giant milkweed in India.¹⁰

My research has revealed that an array of North American plants in the larger dogbane family Apocynaceae can be harvested for bast fiber, as well as plants in the Baptisia or false indigo family. As pictured on page 6 of this manuscript, I have extracted bast fiber from Eastern Bluestar, Amsonia tabernaemontana, and blue false indigo, Baptisia australis. This is a novel finding and suggests that yet more native fiber plants remain to be uncovered.

Assuming fiber-bearing runs in plant families, there are other members of both the Apocynaceae and Fabaceae families that could be explored. Notably, Amorpha fruticosa, the false indigo bush, is a tall leguminous shrub native to Wisconsin that may share this trait with Baptisia species. In the Apocynaceae family, the species Cynanchum laeve or climbing milkweed is another host plant for monarch butterfly caterpillars with a vining growth habit. Since vines are long, C. laeve might yield particularly long bast fibers.

Cotton is an agriculturally intensive crop and its deleterious effects on the environment are well documented.¹¹ Alternative plant fibers like linen and hemp offer more environmentally friendly options.¹² Although these fibers have established paths to market and have already overcome many of the obstacles of turning plant into fabric, it is worth investigating whether plants that are native to our ecoregion, although not yet part of an agricultural production cycle, could offer even more environmentally friendly options.

Crop choice and biodiversity

In their summary of the 2021 United Nations Biodiversity Conference, Tsioumannis et al.¹³ report that “biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate and the drivers of decline show no sign of abatement.” In their words, this is an “existential threat for humanity.”¹³

Crop choice significantly effects local biodiversity.¹⁴ Research suggests that cultivated milkweed provides a more hospitable environment for arthropods than other crops, which are farmed more intensively.¹⁵ Dogbanes, bluestars, and false indigos might well produce similar results. These plants grow naturally in our ecoregion and, at least in theory, could be cultivated like milkweed, without the “tillage, fertilization, and herbicide use” which are required by high-intensity annual crops and are associated with “decreasing arthropod diversity.”¹⁶

By definition, any crop that is farmed in a low-impact way will be better for the environment. Crops that are native to North America have the special potential to support the local fungi and animals that have evolved to feed on them. Milkweeds are the exclusive food plants for the larvae of the monarch butterfly and provide crucial habitat for these vulnerable insects. There are organisms with similar obligate relationships to dogbane and false indigo species. In general, since bast fiber grows in the stem of the plant, organisms that consume the leaves do not threaten the value of the crop.

It is reasonable to think that cultivating native fiber species in a mixed setting could provide habitat that significantly improves on that of intensively farmed crops. This habitat benefit, when coupled with the theoretically low artificial inputs needed to grow these plants, could offer a cultivated fiber source that significantly benefits the environment.

A word on floss

Like cotton, many plants in the dogbane family produce seed hair, which allows their seeds to disseminate by wind. However, unlike cotton, which grows seed hair in a curly boll, Apocynaceae seed hair is straight and smooth. This renders them poor candidates for spinning into yarn, as the individual hairs can’t grab on to each other. Some research has been done into blending milkweed floss with other, more spinnable fibers;¹⁷ others have experimented with texturizing the floss so that it’s easier to spin.¹⁰ The material has found wider usage as insulating fill in clothes and homewares,^18,19 which provides a potential additional commodity for a farm that grows these plants for their bast fibers for textiles.

Different paths to usable fiber

Linen and hemp fibers are harvested similarly: the mature plants are cut down and allowed to decompose, or ret, to help release the bast fibers from the tough outer skin and woody interior of the stalk. The retted and dried stalks are then crushed and combed (known as “breaking,” “scutching,” and “hackling”) to remove the undesirable tough parts of the plant. The hackled fibers are processed further before being spun into yarn. This process is relatively standardized, and its reliability may partly account for the widespread adoption of flax and hemp as fiber sources.¹ The plants in this study don’t necessarily follow the same processes.

I have extracted bast fiber from five species of native plants, manually spinning the fiber with a combination of Flemish twisting and thigh spinning. Many of these fibers I extracted by breaking dried stalks between my fingers and scutching the fibers with my thumbnail to produce a minimum spinnable amount of fiber. My methods and notes are further summarized in the Table 1 beneath Figure 1.

Figure 1 Samples of five North American fiber plants.

Although procedural literature exists on growing and harvesting some of these plants for fiber, not all is of equal value. The USDA’s Plant Guide for Apocynum cannabinum indicates that stalks left to overwinter are “full of mush or empty” and that “the fibers can’t be removed after one winter.”²⁰ My research has found that Apocynum and some Asclepias fiber are significantly more durable to frost than this, with the pictured A. cannabinum and Asclepias incarnata fiber specimens harvested from overwintered stalks. Indeed, in these examples the epidermis has nearly disintegrated, leaving the bast exposed and easy to separate from the xylem and pith. Figures 2A and 2B show the stalks that these specimens were collected from.

Figure 2 A and B, overwintered stalks of dogbane hemp Apocynum cannabinum and swamp milkweed Asclepias incarnata, showing the intact fiber stripping easily from the stalk.

On the other hand, in my experience, common milkweed Asclepias syriaca bast fiber is particularly perishable, and the surest way to harvest good quality fibers is to strip them from the green plant. Dead or senescent A. syriaca stalks are quickly covered with black mildew, and fiber harvested from these stalks is short and weak. When harvested green, however, the fiber is particularly strong and fine, as seen in the pictured example of loose fiber and thigh-spun yarn.

I have experimented with harvesting eastern bluestar Amsonia tabernaemontana fiber while the plant is green, after retting, and after overwintering outdoors. All methods produce usable fiber. The pictured specimen is from a group of stalks that I retted and then broke by hand. Rather than scutching, I boiled the broken stalks in water with lye and detergent to help clean, degum, and separate the fibers. Pictured in Figure 3 are the copious short fibers or “tow” that this method produced. Amsonia fiber processed through breaking, scutching, and hackling is longer and more intact, similar to flax/linen. Fiber processed in this method is pictured in Figure 4.

Figure 3 Short “tow” fibers from eastern bluestar Amsonia tabernaemontana.

Figure 4 Amsonia fiber processed through breaking, scutching, and hackling.

It is worth noting here that Amsonia species are not native in Wisconsin and any examples found in a non-cultivated setting are garden escapees. In this sense, Amsonia tabernaemontana could be considered an invasive plant, although its native range extends to central Illinois.

During the growing season, Baptisia or “false indigo” plants are an attractive, glaucous blue green. At the end of the season, they die and quickly turn dark brown to black. It is reported in many publications that weak indigo dye can be made from Baptisia leaves, but experts have found no indigo-forming chemicals in plants from this genus. The larger family, Fabaceae, includes the Indigofera genus, some plants from which, as the name suggests, do produce indigo. This phylogenetic closeness and their similar appearance may explain the confusion.²¹ I have found that jute-like fibers can be stripped from the stalks as soon as they are fully black and dry. Processing through breaking, scutching, and hackling produces a slightly lighter-colored fiber, pictured in Figure 5. Interestingly, one researcher has extracted a (non-indigo) dark pigment from Baptisia leaves and stems and has found it to be a substantive dye on cotton.²²

Figure 5 Baptisia fiber processed through breaking, scutching, and hackling.

Because nettles and their relatives like ramie Boehmeria nivea and allo Girardinia versifolia are established fiber plants with significant scholarship⁹ and some economic importance,²³ I have opted to focus on new and more obscure species in my research. The nettles species and allies that are native to North America, including Urtica gracilis and Laportea canadensis, have been used for fiber and certainly merit further research.

While my manual efforts to work with these plant fibers provide proof of concept for the use of native-to-North America plant species, in order to become harvestable for bast fiber for textile usage, multiple further levels of investigation are required.

Estimating crops and yields

Flax and hemp plants are cultivated for fiber as perennial crops with seeds sown notably close together to promote tall, straight growth. Flax for fiber is sown at 175-200 plants per square foot or about 8 million plants per acre, with each plant growing to 3-4 feet high.²⁴ Hemp for fiber is sown at about 180,000 plants per acre, with the greater height of hemp (up to 7 feet) and its significantly higher bast content helping it to produce more total fiber per acre than linen.²⁵

The North American fiber plants are not cultivated to the same degree as flax and hemp and their extreme limits for close crop planting have not been tested. They are also perennials whose roots go dormant in winter, causing the aerial portions of the plant to die off; until the roots are established in their second or third year, the plants will not reach their maximum height during the growing season. Consequently, even a field seeded very thickly with these plants might limit its own yield over time as less-fit plants would be shaded out by faster growing ones over successive growing seasons.

However, bluestars and false indigos are well-established garden plants and have been selectively cultivated to some degree for vigor and size. Milkweeds are increasingly grown in gardens as monarch butterfly conservation has become more popular; there may be some selection pressure for easy-to-garden strains of the popular milkweed plants. Dogbane is almost never intentionally planted, as it grows aggressively (if not particularly densely) and can be hard to control.

Based on observation of wild plants and some gardening guides, the five plants in this paper might yield the number of plants in the Table 2 below if grown in monoculture with maximum planting.

However, to cultivate these species in monoculture would significantly miss the point of increasing biodiversity by growing native plants. Making the considerable assumption that these five plants could be grown in a mixed setting with all species equally represented at the maximum planting density, the average density would be 190,000 stems per acre. With an average plant height across the species of 4.1 feet, this would yield 779,000 linear feet of stems per acre, compared to hemp’s 1,260,000 linear feet and flax’s 28,000,000 linear feet.

Even with an optimistic estimation, these plants are not as productive as hemp or flax. They would require more acreage to produce the same amount of plant material to be processed into fiber. However, if that acreage requires relatively little agricultural input and provides ample beneficial habitat for wildlife, is that really a problem?

It should be noted that linear feet of plant material don’t track directly to the amount of fiber produced or to the quality of that fiber. Although flax produces 22 times more linear feet of plants per acre, hemp can produce 600% more fiber by weight per acre.²⁸ No species is likely to approach hemp’s high bast fiber content, but these figures do not exist at all for the five plants listed here. Further research may show that some or all of them produce enough bast to mitigate the relatively low density of planting.

Imagining new systems

Large apparel and textile businesses that pursue an image of environmental sustainability often follow “mix and match” strategies of swapping in or out the latest virtuous material or practice. This approach does not produce significant change in the environmental impacts of textile and fashion production.

Small and micro-businesses in the fashion space are actually reimagining the system of fashion production and consumption, opting to limit their short-term growth in favor of financial, social, and environmental sustainability.²⁹

These small businesses that intentionally remain small may in fact have found the right size for a fashion business to be. It seems clear that companies which pursue continuous growth do so at great social and environmental cost – throughout modernity, deferring those costs to future generations. Well, the bills are coming due.

Native North American bast fiber plants are unlikely to rival flax or hemp in productivity. However, this study suggests they offer other, perhaps more urgent, advantages: they support local ecosystems, require minimal artificial inputs, and hold cultural significance through their longstanding use by Indigenous communities.

Among the most promising species are Amsonia tabernaemontana and Baptisia australis, both of which yielded previously undocumented spinnable bast fibers. Additionally, Apocynum cannabinum and Asclepias incarnata demonstrated viability for overwinter fiber harvesting, contrary to USDA guidance. These findings highlight that several underexplored species have meaningful potential for fiber extraction, especially in small-scale, mixed-species systems.

Importantly, cultivating native fiber plants may serve dual purposes: material production and environmental restoration. The biodiversity benefits are not side effects, but central to their value.

Moving forward, this work invites further research into fiber yield, processing efficiency, and ecological impact. It also points to a deeper question: what if fiber agriculture were measured not by profit or output alone, but by the health of the systems it sustains? For small-scale producers, designers, and land stewards, native fiber plants may offer a viable and regenerative path; one in which the goals of fiber production and environmental stewardship are not in conflict but reinforce eachother.

¹As an aside, a wide variety of other plants are grown for non-apparel textile applications, including Agave species, abacá, and piña. These plants bear so-called “hard fiber” in their leaves rather than bast fiber from the stem. Hard fiber is more often used to make cordage than fabric. Exceptions include the bashofu abacá weaving tradition of Okinawa and the formal barong Tagalog garment of the Philippines, which is most often made from abacá or piña fiber. Several economically important species of leaf-fiber-bearing plants are native to the American Southwest and Central and South America, including maguey, sisal, and other species of agave and yucca. The tallgrass prairie species rattlesnake master, Eryngium yuccifolium, has been identified as the source of hard fiber in woven slippers and other indigenous artifacts in Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri. (Brakie, M. 2021. Plant Guide for button eryngo (Eryngium yuccifolium). USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service, East Texas Plant Materials Center. Nacogdoches, TX.) Any long-leafed plant with parallel venation, like American Tiger Lilly Lillium superbum, Irises, and blue-eyed grass could potentially furnish hard fiber from their leaves

The author would like to acknowledge and thank the Textiles and Fashion Design Program in the Department of Design Studies in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Thanks also to the support and encouragement of Carolyn Benforado and Irwin Goldman, the Allen Centennial Garden staff, the Deforest Area Public Library, the Academy of Natural Sciences and the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design at Drexel University, and Matt Knittel and Peter Frank of the Cleveland Metroparks West Creek Reservation. Very special thanks to Ally, Emmett, and Clyde.

None.

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

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