Harvesting and Using a Prickly Lettuce hand drill spindle

[RoadLessTraveled]

I've been watching the Prickly Lettuce grow in a field near where I work since around April of this year, watching it grow taller, produce seeds, and then begin to turn into hand drill material. Since it's so abundant around here, I figured I should learn to use it. Here's a link to some of that history. Around the beginning of June, I began to see the plants going to seed and was hopeful that this marked the time when I might be able to harvest the stalks for hand drill spindles. But at that time I was not able to produce embers with the stalks. That may be due to my lack of skill more than the quality of the plant.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to harvest a few stalks and try again. This time, I succeeded. Right now there are very few plants which still have any green leaves on them. All of them have gone to seed, but a few still have a couple of tiny green leaves. I harvested a few of those plants and noticed that their pith is still moist. But the plants which have no green leaves, whose dried leaves are almost completely shriveled, their pith is dry. The stalks of these plants make good spindles for the hand drill.

Here are some photos and videos I made yesterday of me harvesting a good stalk, cleaning it and preparing it to be used as a hand drill spindle, and then using it with a cedar hearth board to produce an ember and then a fire. I searched for stalks that were tall and strait. The shorter stalks are also thin. It's easier, at least for me, to use a stalk if it's about 3/8" at the base tapering to about 1/4" where the spindle meets the hearth board.

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Harvesting the Prickly Lettuce stalk:

[RoadLessTraveled]

Preparing and using the Prickly Lettuce stalk as a hand drill:

[hunter63]

Pretty cool......Have you tried Mullen stalks?
Not sure if we have prickly lettuce in Wisconsin.

[RoadLessTraveled]

Yes, I have tried Mullein on cedar. It was the material I used for my first ever hand drill success. I'd say Prickly Lettuce and Mullein require about the same amount of effort to use. The best material by far that I've used is Sotol on Sotol.

I posted my success with Mullein on cedar here:
http://www.wilderness-survival.net/f...-Drill-Success
Here's the video:


and here's a video of Sotol on Sotol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3yX5e1AuzI

[hunter63]

I'm still trying with mullen have a LOT of that around here.....
thanks

[crashdive123]

Very nicely done.

[your_comforting_company]

I'm pretty sure prickly (or hairy) lettuce grow in WI. That stuff grows everywhere.
You really want to wait until almost all the leaves are gone to harvest. Lettuce and horseweed are two of my favorite and most dependable drills for any hearthboard.
Nice pics and vid RLT.

[RoadLessTraveled]

Thanks Crash, YCC,

hunter63, I just checked about the distribution of Prickly Lettuce in Wisconson. While it does grow there, it's only *been reported* in a few counties:

http://plants.usda.gov/java/county?s...55&symbol=LASE
Counties_hyborea1v4076234035084.jpg

Compared to mullein, which is much more abundant across the state:
http://plants.usda.gov/java/county?s...55&symbol=VETH
Counties_hyborea1v4076304435091.jpg

YCC, I'm still looking for Horse weed! I'm still not sure I know how to recognize it. I think I've found some, but the stalk's diameter is only about 1/4" and so I'm thinking it's too small. It's starting to turn brown now. I'll collect some and try it whatever it is

[hunter63]

According to that map, It grows near the city house, but is one county north at "The Place"....

Mullen is funny stuff, doesn't seem to follow any pattern of growing, have mature, as well as new plants, all at the same time.
Brought home a bunch of stalks to try......

[Wildthang]

This is what the last post column said when I looked at this thread a minute ago, " Harvesting and using a Hunter 63"

[your_comforting_company]

GRRRR... this is the fifth time I've tried to post a simple 2 minute typing on this thread... I will take you some pics RLT and we need to swap emails so we can communicate, because the board obviously has something wrong with it. This is the ONLY site I have this problem with and it is really, very truly, trying my patience. And I'm already not a patient man.
About the largest Conyza Canadensis stalk I've found and used was about 3/8". Smaller spindle:hearth means less resistance to the effort you are putting in. You get more work out of every calorie you expend, leading to quicker embers, but also drilling through more quickly. I'll go outside in a few minutes and take pictures of horseweed since I can't seem to find them among my 1000+ plant pictures.

[your_comforting_company]

Sorry it took so long to get these pictures up. Man, it's been a busy year! I will do my best to explain the features that help identify Conyza canadensis.
While most of them don't get over 4 feet tall, this one is a clear 7 feet. Notice the general silohuette of the plant.
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The entire plant is hirsute (hairy) and the coarsely toothed, alternate leaves are dark green and fuzzy on top, and light green and fuzzy on bottom.
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This one is barely 3 feet tall, but all the other characteristics are there. Even the tallest ones are barely 3/8" thick, this one is about 1/4" which for me is just about ideal when you consider the friction-fire triad: PSI of surface area, rate of spin, rate of degradation (i.e. how much effort it takes to powder)
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There will be many florets atop the plant at flowering. It is in the asteraceae family, each flower actually composed of many smaller flowers, and also, the typical fluffy pappus hairs on the seeds that help them float on the wind.
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Very often, the alternate leaves will have additional leaf buds in the axils. This seems to be more common among the horseweed that is going to seed.
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This one, a clear 5 feet tall, has already seeded and reached maturity. This will definately be one of my spindles as soon as it dries. Then I will pick it, tie it to another stick that is fairly straight and leave it a short while before using. Right now, there are very few available for friction fire as they are all still growing.
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Very commonly found in partial shade along roadsides and other waste sites. Very common among goldenrod stands in old fields, but do not confuse it with goldenrod! When comparing the two side-by-side, they are extremely different, but at a passing glance, you might mistake the two, especially this time of year when goldenrod is beginning to flower. Horseweed, like mullein, grows in a diverse variety of soil conditions, preferring poor soil to rich and fertile.
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Sometimes the plant gets damaged, or encounters some restriction to growth. In order to make up for this, the plant will sometimes branch, in order to collect more sunlight with additional foliage. For this specimen, I would only consider using the bottom, unbranched part for friction fire.
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On the left side, here, you see a bit of goldenrod, with horseweed laid on the ground, and a spent mullein stalk at the top. The mullein is just about ready to use for ff.
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Hopefully, I've included enough details for you to be able to locate and identify this particularly useful plant. Keep in mind, that in my area, most of them are not yet ready for harvest, but there are other plants that have reached maturity that are equally as viable for fire.

[RoadLessTraveled]

Thanks for the excellent pictures, YCC. Just last week I realized that I a patch of "horse weed" I'd been watching for a month or two is actually goldenrod! The flower is what helped me get the correct ID.

Your photos and descriptions should help me recognize what is/isn't horsweed. Very possibly some of the plants I previously dismissed due to the thinness of the stalk were actually horseweed. I'll try to go back and look again.

[recon]

Great pic (s) for ID of horse weed glad you posted all parts ( leave, flower, stalk) instead of just overall apic