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Yucca: The Popeye of Plant Fibers

 

🌿 Yucca: The Popeye of Plant Fibers

Mom’s Garden

Growing up, the crime of tampering with my mom’s garden was worse than getting arrested for robbing a bank. I heard the name across many SPT (Society of Primitive Technology, if you can get your hands on a journal, don’t let go) journals, its utility used for various applications throughout the country, and here it was conveniently in our driveway garden. I was able to collect the stalks once they had grown enough to fall over, which we will touch on later, but it wasn’t until a camping trip where I wandered off a beaten path to uncover a plant, unclaimed by anyone in all its glory, that I was able to familiarize myself with its unique strength. In this article, our focus will be it’s incredibly strong fibers how its leaves how they have played a role in indigenous lifeways, and how if you happen to find a bounty, how you could use it for your own good.

History and Use

There are a few different species of yucca and it goes by various common names, including the common perennial, Our Lord’s Candle (for its flowers), and Spanish Bayonet (for its sturdy, sharp leaves). It was widely used by southwestern cultures for weaving, medicine, and culinary applications. The leaves are strong enough to be woven into sandals, and impressively strong cordage that rivals steel chain, figuratively of course.

Multiple parts of the plant were edible. The flowering stalk could be eaten green and roasted, and the bulb where the root and stem join (referred to as the apical meristem) was roasted in the coals, preferably within an oven. The roasted seeds could also be eaten or turned into flour.
For those who are not pyrotechnically inclined, like myself, the dried stalk makes an excellent hearthboard when paired with a harder spindle for a hand drill or bow and drill, and if you are scratching the surface of primitive fire making this is an excellent place to start given it’s combustion temperature is lower then normal wood.
The root contains saponins, chemicals that are responsible for soap! By pounding pieces of the root, these chemicals are released and when combined with water form a lather, which is then used to clean anything from arms to baskets.

How to Process Yucca Leaves

Or at least how I was taught. Despite not being a resource of the Powhatan tribe, learning how to process the leaves was one of the first things I learned as an interpreter at Henricus Historical Park in central Virginia. A container of water is fine but a source of fresher, running water should be more sanitary. Take this with a grain of salt, as I haven’t tried it and we’re relying on decomposition in our favor.
To start, we want fresh leaves and a wooden baton and wooden anvil, stone would damage the fibers. Begin by lightly pounding the leaves on the anvil, this softens the flesh of the leaves and separates the fibers. A flake or sharp edge, we’re not looking to cut through paper on a single stroke, just enough to scrape off the soft meat and not cut or damage the fibers as we do so.
From here we can begin twirling it on our thighs for making rope, or we can place the leaves into a container of fresh water, and leave them for a few days. This process can get a little gross, as the water gets stagnant and the leaves rotten, but we’re counting on decomposition to soften the leaves enough so the rest of the meat can easily be cleaned off from the fibers, which shouldn’t be harmed by the water. Once you’ve cleaned them off (if you want to make it full circle use soap from the root!), I find it’s fun to get people to try and break the cordage, as you will find most people underestimate the strength of plants.

Incorporation Into Our Classes

 I was never really fascinated with weaving until I saw a mentor of mine with his pair of yucca sandals, the utility of which made me like them even more, and I would go so far as to say they function closer to a shoe sole than a leather moccasin. Provided we can find a legal and cost-effective source, we’d love to find a place for this special plant in one of our classes if not offer a course by itself on the subject!

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