So, I was inspired watching this video from Ray Mears, England's ultimate bushcraft guru:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik7GbPEqljg

In the video, he makes a stone age bow and arrows, but one of the interesting parts for me was the way he attaches the fletching.  He makes a glue out of the bulb of a plant known as bluebell, which I'd never heard of, but which is apparently very common in the forests of the UK.  Anyway, this was based on what he'd seen the Hadza do, chewing up the bulb of a plant, and using it as a glue for their arrows.  That can be found in this video, which is Mears' second trip to the Hadza, I believe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sY3XQZBx2w

Anyway, all of this reminded me of a plant we have here in North Carolina called the crane-fly orchid.  It grows on the forest floor of the Eastern Woodlands in abundance.  Wiki has some good info:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipularia_discolor

The leaves are distinctive, green with parallel veins running lengthwise (sometimes more prominent than others), but always bright purple on the underside:



The bulbs are attached to the roots underground and look like this when cleaned up:



These bulbs are starchy, but edible, often compared to a potato, and sometimes cooked before eating.  However, they can be eaten raw.  The flavor isn't bad, but they're incredibly sticky, turning into a sort of putty in your mouth.  This made me think that they might be suitable for use as a glue for fletching.  So, I collected a bulb, chewed it up, and spat it out on a stick and stuck a leaf on top, just to see if it worked as glue.  It immediately stuck the leaf to the shaft, which would have facilitated fletching considerably, had I been up to that at the moment.  It takes time to cure, and it doesn't have a lot of holding power on its own, but I think it's a pretty good natural adhesive to assist with fletching arrow shafts if you want to use exclusively primitive methods.

Dan wrote on Dec 14^th, 2012 at 5:58pm:


I wouldn't use it by itself for hafting points, I'd still want a pine resin/charcoal mastic for that, but for fletching, which requires less intense adhesives, this may be a very viable alternative.

Check carefully. If it is a native orchid species it may be a "Protected" plant for which there are some fairly stiff fines for collecting.

yes.... I love natural stuff. PPg beats gorilla glue for some purposes.