We Called it Ditch Weed and Left it Alone (Cannabis sativa)

The New York Times (11/20/24) reported funding of research on whether cannabis extracts can effectively treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and commented that this is a first because as a Schedule 1 Narcotic, permission to study cannabis has been difficult to impossible. That set off a lot of memories for me. 

marijuana (Canabis sativa) amid weeds

Cannabis also called hemp, marijuana, weed and more (Cannabis sativa, marijuana family, Cannabaceae) has been illegal in the United States since the 1930s, though the specific laws have changed. I was never interested in it as a drug, but I have been quite interested in it as an historical medicinal and a fiber plant, for which you need only books, not the real thing. 

The various names are not quite the same: cannabis is any Cannabis sativa, but marijuana and weed are names for plants used as drugs, while hemp is the variety grown for fiber. People have tried to avoid legal perils by separating the various forms of Cannabis, sometimes into different species, but the botanical community has pretty consistently said there was only one species in the genus, C. sativa and the illegal status of any and all cannabis plants followed from that. 

Teaching ecology in Nebraska, we would encounter big cannabis plants growing in roadside ditches. A crop plant, grown for the fibers used in rope and sail cloth, most recently during World War II, it had escaped. It was weedy but not very invasive. We called it ditch weed. The story was that ditch weed, having been grown for fiber, was a waste of time as a drug. I don't know if that was true or not. 

As an instructor, I carefully left it alone. Collecting it would too easily be misunderstood. What sticks with me is what that did to science. For example, the current Flora of Nebraska shows where it was recorded based on plant collections I think that is a major undercount, with some botanists slipping it into their plant presses, but many more cautious ones leaving it alone. 

Cannabis in botanical garden, Zurich, Switzerland
as a fiber plant

Books on useful plants, published in the United States, from the 1930s, often excluded cannabis. I pulled 14 herb and useful plant books off my shelf, published in the United States over the last 100 years. Five had both Cannabis and my test plant, mullein Verbascum, used to be sure they'd include weedy European plants, nine had Verbascum but not Cannabis. There are valid justifications for omitting Cannabis from a book on garden herbs, but surely it was one of the plants used by the Shakers (Shaker Medicinal Herbs) or to be found foraging for medicinals (A Handbook of Native American Herbs). It has been used to ease pain and as a sedative for millennia. 

My two copies of Nicholas Culpeper's Complete Herbal & the English Physician (not included in the above comparison) are instructive. An English physician writing for a popular audience, Culpeper wrote several editions of his book in the 1630s which have been printed and reprinted. One of mine, from Foulsham Press, London, no date given, includes hemp and gives varous medicinal uses, the other, published by Magna Books of England in 1981, says "reprinted from an original edition published in 1826" and, although ostensibly the same book, lacks hemp.  

I do not have the resources to do a search of craft or trade history books, but I suspect some of them likewise skipped over cannabis.

Think about being the author and trying to pick your words to describe the historic uses of an illegal plant. Or the publisher, advised by lawyers of potential liability. So many pitfalls, better to leave it out. Most plant books can include only some of the plants that could be covered anyway.

hemp, Cannabis sativa, is a good fiber plant,
Note the leaves reaching in at the top of the photo; it
gets very tall making 6' unbroken fibers

Likewise, I think reports on fibers, whether for rope or clothing, have often failed to mention hemp since it was illegal. Its an excellent fiber plant, one that grows well in cooler climates where cotton and sisal do not. The U.S. grew a lot of hemp in the 19th century but from the 1930s hemp growing was banned because it was the same species as marijuana, Cannabis sativa. It was considered exactly the same species or maybe a fiber-selected variety, but in any case hemp became a Schedule 1 Narcotic when marijuana the drug did. U.S. production of hemp for fiber stopped and import was prohibited for decades. And out of sight led to out of mind; we tended to overlook it when teaching about plant fibers. I had no personal experience with it, as I did with cotton and linen fibers. It is a temperate zone representative of plants that create big, sturdy bast fibers, most of the rope fibers are basts link.  

Because each generation of plant writers builds on the previous one, the omissions are easily perpetuated. Today, I think hemp as a fiber and marijuana as a medicinal plant are being included in the appropriate places, but for most of a century, nothing new was added and the books written by people  who knew hemp became so dated that nobody that consulted them. 

It is a curious situation for a living thing, a plant in this case, to be illegal. Noxious weeds are illegal as invasives, but rarely all across North America. Cannabis was and is federally a Schedule 1 Narcotic and illegal across the nation. That produced a gap in our reports of past useful plants that we quickly became unaware of. The situation is certainly changing, but allowing study of possible medicinal benefits reminded me of decades of willful blindness. I want to bring to your attention that if an older herb or fiber book doesn't mention cannabis, it might be a reaction to its legal status, not because it wasn't used historically. 

Hemp seed for sale in a garden shop
 in Barcelona, Spain, a shocking sight to an American

                                                                        (2014)

Comments and correction welcome.

References

The news article;

Londoño, E. 2024. Weed for PTSD? Eager for Better Cannabis Science, F.D.A. Clears Study. The New York Times. 11/20/24 link Its behind a paywall, this may not be link

References mentioned

Foster, S. and R. L. Johnson. 2006. Desk Reference to Nature's Medicine. National Geographic Press. Washington D.C.

Hutchens, A. R. 1992. A Handbook of Native American Herbs. The pocket guide to 125 medicinal plants and their uses. Shambala Press. Boulder, Colorado. Includes many introduced naturalized species.

Kaul, R.B., D. M. Sutherland and S. B. Rolfsmeier. 2011. The Flora of Nebraska. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln NE.

Miller, A. B. 1998. Shaker Medicinal Herbs. A compendium of history, lore and uses. Storey Books. Pownal, Vermont.

Kathy Keeler

A Wandering Botanist

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