Welcome aboard! It is my understanding that hemp has been found amongst surviving fragments of fabric. That said, we basically use it in a heavy weight as a canvass. I leave it to the people on the board who are far more expert than I to answer in detail.

'Hemp is a plant that can be used to produce thousands of products. Hemp is of the same plant species that produces marijuana; its scientific name is Cannabis Sativa. Hemp has been used for thousands of years to produce products like paper, textiles, oil, rope, and canvas. In fact, the name canvas is derived from the Arabic word meaning cannabis. Hemp grown for industrial use is very low in THC (the psychoactive chemical in marijuana), thus making industrial hemp useless as a drug.

----Excerpted from "Industrial Hemp Support Grows in Midwest" The Christian Science Monitor

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2001

...Paul Mahlberg, a professor of cell biology at Indiana University in Bloomington, says law enforcement in Europe has no trouble telling the two apart. He says hemp grows eight to 14 feet high, is unbranched, and is planted a few inches apart, like a cornfield. Marijuana plants are typically three to four feet high, branch out like bushes, and need to be planted four feet apart.

Moreover, Professor Mahlberg maintains that planting the two species together would be ill-conceived: When hemp cross-pollinates with marijuana, it cuts the drug's potency in half, making it useless for illicit purposes...

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Cannabis used for cloth, rope and food is a different species than that used for recreational purposes.