Iowa's lowly milkweed makes a mighty war effort

Milkweed, when considered these days, is mentioned most often in relation to monarch butterflies --- their larvae eat the plants almost exclusively. Which is why volunteer plants in the museum gardens (above) are allowed to mature.

But there was a time, during World War II, when milkweed saved an untold number of allied lives in the global effort against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.

The secret of milkweed lies in its floss --- both waterproof and buoyant when it bursts from protective pods to scatter seeds. Beginning in 1944, school children across America and Canada were recruited to collect those pods and the floss they contained for the war effort.

Saturday, Sept. 30, 1944, was the first milkweed harvest day in Lucas County --- when students and country school teachers brought the bags of milkweed pods that they had been collecting along roadsides and in pastures and fields since classes began  to a collection station on the east side of the courthouse in Chariton.

When all was said and done, 336 bags were collected. Beverly Strohman of Chariton gathered and turned in 73 bags --- the day's record (Beverly went on to graduate from Chariton High School in 1953, then met Robert L. Bruce while while both were attending the University of Iowa during the mid-1950s; they married in Chariton during 1957).

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Life preservers were vital to the survival of allied airmen and seamen who fought so much of World War II on or over the seas. And until the war intensified, those preservers had been filled with kapok, a fiber similar to milkwood floss but produced by tropical trees.

The Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) had been the world's principal source of kapok, but now it was under Japanese control and the supply was cut off.

Researchers knew that milkweed floss possessed identical characteristics, but there was no time to launch a commercial growing effort large enough to meet the need. So North America's school children were recruited.

The effort was coordinated by the Milkweed Floss Division of War Hemp Industries, Inc., a government-chartered private corporation established to exploit hemp for the war effort. Onion sacks were distributed for the collection effort, then collected and shipped to central processing sites. An estimated 2 million tons of floss was collected during 1944, 11 million tons before the war ended.

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The 1944 milkweed pod collection date and place were announced in The Chariton Leader of Sept. 26 as follows:

"Saturday, September 30, has been designated as the day for the collection of all milkweed pods that have been gathered in Lucas county. The collection site is the east side of the court house yard and will be made in the morning. This collection is under the supervision of the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration committee), which organization will store them and then ship to factories where they will be used in life preservers.

"All over the county the school children have been busy gathering the pods. At her first teachers meeting of the year, County Superintendent Cecil Stephens gave out the sacks and announced the plan and since then the teachers have been working the project in their individual schools.

"The AAA asks that all sacks be brought to Chariton Saturday where they will be inspected and counted. All sacks should be filled so they will tie easily and should be thoroughly dried. They will be paid for at the rate of 20 cents per sack when dried or 15 cents if green."

Here a report of the outcome, published in The Herald-Patriot of Thursday, Oct. 5:

"A drive for milkweed floss in Lucas county has just closed with 336 bags of pods brought in to Chariton, Lew Snook of the Lucas County AAA, announced today. The milk weed, all sacked, now awaits the War Hemp Industries Corporation, of Omaha, which organization will either call for the collection or (arrange for) its shipping.

"Miss Beverly Strohman, of Chariton, was the outstanding pod collector for the county. The amount she gathered and turned in was 73 bags.

"English township school No. 1, Pauline Campbell, teacher, contributed 18 bags to the total. Lincoln township school No. 1 was second high for schools, their total being 17 bags. Lydia Palmer is teacher of that school.

"The collection is now being held in storage in a Chariton warehouse."