# flax or milkweed or what?



## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

i notice a milkweed type plant in one of the fields that is over-grown. when i see it in winter, it has a long skinny pod that looks like a dried greenbean. now that i see it in the summertime, i am surprised it is a whole lot like milkweed. it has the white sticky liquid but, like i said, the pods are long and skinny. what i thought was going to be what i am used to calling milkweed, the plant with the big fat pods, turned out to be something else. is this what flax is?


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## woodspirit (Aug 3, 2005)

Flax has fine foliage, whereas Milkweeds are larger leaved and as you mentioned, have milky sap. Flax doesn't.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

yeah, i just did some research and it is not flax. i found out there are 100 types of milkweed in the usa, lol.


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## bee (May 12, 2002)

is most likely Dogbane, or Indian hemp..a member of the milkweed family that is as milkweed a colony plant; meaning it will spread by runner as well as seed. I like this plant because it is a great source of fiber that I used to use in my wild food talks to show folks how to get fiber in a survival situation. The fiber is in the stem and can be harvested in the green stage or in the dry stage; the fluff in the pods is a good fire starter material; a word of caution..milkweed shoots in the spring are edible and usually cooked like asparagus(several changes of BOILING water over 15 min..boiling so as to not fix the "bitter" in the shoots) but the dogbane is not and you should be sure of which you have! Milkweed shoots are downey and dogbanes are smooth and not as fat. I reccomend Peterson's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants; it's great! :dance:


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

thanks bee. i am pretty sure that is what it is.


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