As fall approaches many folk begin collecting items from nature, such as bittersweet, cones and nuts, etc. Years ago a reader sent us a bird ornament made from a milkweed pod.

Mary Alice decided that she wanted to make birds, so off we went to collect milkweed pods. A small Christmas tree in our kitchen was decorated with doves and chickadees made from the pods.

Although milkweed plants are important to the monarch butterfly, they were also important during World War ll to the U.S. government. Back then, our government enlisted civilians to collect the pods for the war effort.

On December 7, 1941 at 7:55 a.m., the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The attack came from Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s six aircraft carriers. The mission was to destroy the U.S. Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor. There had been no intention to invade the island because Yamamoto’s transport ships were carrying troops to the Philippines, Malaya, Siam, Guam and Wake Island, with their objective to conquer the oil, rice and rubber of the East Indies.

For the next five months, the Japanese troops were met with little resistance. General MacArthur left Manila and went to Australia. Trapped troops in the Philippines had been driven into Corregidor and Bataan. Although they tied up a very sizable Japanese force for months, major general Edward King’s forces were down to one-third rations when the Japanese began its push on April 3, 1942.

Against orders from General Wainwright, King surrendered his remaining starving troops on April 9. They began the 85-mile death march out of Batan. By March, all of Indonesia and New Guinea were under Japanese occupation.

In April, Admiral Halsey’s task force launched Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo. Although the raid didn’t do much harm to the Japanese, America’s morale got a big boost from the attack. Of the 80 fliers, 71 survived.

Earlier, the United States Navy had replaced kapok for cork in their life jackets. Kapok was light, vermin proof and did not readily absorb water, which made it a good substitute for the cork that the navy previously used in life belts. It was also used in mattresses and upholstery because it was vermin proof.

Kapok is light in weight and cotton like fiber that comes from the seed pods of the kapok or “silk cotton” tree, Ceiba petunia. Kapok, which grows in Java and the East Indies, is a close relative to both the baobab (monkey tree) and balsa tree.

After natives picked the fruit of the kapok tree, they removed the seeds and fibers from the pods and dried them. The seeds were then separated from the fiber by stirring them in a basket until the heavier seeds dropped to the bottom. The fiber was then packed in bails and shipped to the United States, which was the world’s largest user of the fiber. The natives used the seeds to make soap and cattle feed. A gum produced by the tree was also used in medicine.

With the Japanese occupying Java and the East Indies, this supply of kapok was not available for making life jackets, and this was a time when the navy needed the jackets the most. A call went out from the U.S. government for milkweed pods. The Department of Agriculture spearheaded the program to collect the milkweed pods, with the slogan “pick a weed, save a life.”

Perhaps, you were one of the school children, scouts or concerned citizens, armed with sacks, which went a field across the country in 26 states, including Pennsylvania.

The ripened pods were sent to a plant located in Michigan where the pods and seeds were separated from the flossy seed hairs that are waxy on the outside and hollow on the inside. Each of the tiny threads is an air-enclosing tube. Twenty-six ounces of fluff would keep a 150-pound man afloat in sea water for 48 hours.

The government paid the pickers 20 cents a bag. During the last two years of World War II, 25 million pounds of milkweed pods were picked, enough to fill 1.2 million life preservers.

This effort saved many a sailor’s life with a cost of 75 cents a pound. After the war, the navy went back to kapok, which could be imported for only 10 cents a pound.

Milkweed floss, which was five or six times as buoyant as cork, was warmer and six times lighter than wool. These milkweed filaments (floss) are coated with wax and have good insulation qualities. Tests have shown the filaments to be superior to down feathers for insulation. They were used to line flying suits, making them lightweight and warm. If an aviator fell into the ocean, the suit acted as a life preserver.

This was not the first time that milkweed floss had been used. In 1790 Italian voyager Lugi Castiglione wrote that the mountaineers of Virginia made cloth from the outer covering of the stalks of the milkweed plant. The high dextrose content of the nectar led to milkweed’s use as a source of sweetener for Native Americans and voyageurs.

During the 1860s, Salem, Massachusetts, had a milkweed industry. The silk was used to stuff pillows, cushions and mattresses, while purses, netting and socks were made from other parts of the plants.

Milkweed is a common folk remedy used for removing warts. The sap was applied directly to the wart several times daily until the wart fell off. Milkweed is beneficial to nearby plants, repelling some pests, especially wireworms.

Everyone knows that the monarch butterfly cannot live without the milkweed plant, however, some birds and insects — such as tachinid flies, bees, ants, tussock moths, milkweed beetles and aphids — also depend on the plant. The orioles and other birds use the stringy fibers of dead milkweed stalks to build their nests.

The name of milkweed comes from the white, milky sap that oozes out when the plant is scratched. The leaves are from four to ten inches long and light green in color. There are 85 species of milkweed in North America. The common milkweed plant has many uses.

Although I have read in books that the leaves can be eaten when they first appear, I wouldn’t recommend this because the plant’s sap is poisonous. The milkweed plant can be a first class food for cattle and better than soybeans, however, since the milky sap contains enough cardiac glycoside to kill a cow, the sap must be detoxified before being used for cattle food.

During World War II, both Germany and the United States experimented with milkweed as a natural source for rubber. No record has been found of a large-scale success.

And to think we classify this plant as a weed.

Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.