Botany: The Science of Plant Life

by Norman Taylor

3. Fibers

Not only do plants furnish us with food and drink, but most of our clothing is made from plant products. There is annually produced twice as much cotton as wool, while linen is made from the fibers in the stem of the flax plant, which is also the source of linseed oil. Fibers occur in many different parts of plants, but most often in the stem, or in the bark of the stem. Some occur in the wood itself, as for instance that in spruce wood, from which news paper is made. Others are found in the attachments of the seed, such as cotton. Some are very coarse, such as that of Carex stricta, a swamp sedge from which Crex rugs are woven. Others like that of the leaves of the pineapple are as fine as silk, and in the Philippine Islands where much pineapple fiber is produced, some of the most beautiful undergarments and women’s wear are made from it. Again, others, such as Manila hemp, furnish us with cordage of great strength.

COTTON

It has been stated, perhaps a little rashly, that the value of the cotton crop in our Southern States exceeds all other agricultural products of the country. Whether this be true or no matters not, as cotton production and manufacture is certainly one of the most important industries of the world. Our own New England mills and those in Lancashire total an enormous volume of manufactured cotton goods, and what the stoppage of the cotton crop means to these industrial centers was shown even so far back as the Civil War, when the “cotton riots” in Lancashire were noised all over the world. Cotton is the most important of all fiber plants.

There are several different kinds of commercially important cottons, and perhaps dozens of others, all derived from the genus Gossypium, a relative of our common garden mallows belonging to the Malvaceæ. By far the most valuable is Sea Island cotton, derived from Gossypium barbadense, which is probably a native of the West Indies, although really wild plants are yet to be discovered. It is the kind, of which scores of varieties are known in cultivation, that is grown mostly along our southeastern coastal States. Next in value, but cultivated in greater quantity because larger areas are suited to it, is Gossypium hirsutum. The fiber is a little shorter, but the total amount of cotton derived from this species probably exceeds that from all other kinds. It is the cotton grown mostly in upland Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, and the wild home of this species is supposed to be America, although it, too, has never been found in the wild state. The third cotton plant is Gossypium herbaceum, a native of India, and the origin of many varieties now grown in that country. It has a shorter fiber and is worth about one-third the price of Sea Island cotton. From Abyssinia and neighboring regions comes the fourth important cotton plant, Gossypium arboreum, differing from the others in being a small tree. All the others are shrubby, while G. herbaceum is merely a woody herb. These different plants have been tried in the countries suited to cotton raising, but, generally speaking, the chief crop from each is produced in the country nearest the supposed wild home of it.

In all of them the fiber is really an appendage of the seeds, and each pod as it splits open is found to be packed full of a white cottony mass of these fibers with the seeds attached. These white masses of cotton, or bolls, have to be picked by hand, as no really successful machine has ever been found for this purpose. Women and children do a large part of the picking, and the wastage due to careless picking is tremendous. The whole value of the cotton crop depends upon an invention by Eli Whitney, an American, of a machine to separate the cotton from its seed. This “ginning” machine is now much perfected and, in America at least, is the chief method of separation of fiber and seed. In India and for certain other varieties a different type of machine, known as the Macarthy gin, is employed. The latter is used in America also for some of the long-fiber Sea Island cottons. With the baling of the cotton the work of the grower is over and the product is ready for the manufacturers. The resulting seed, after ginning, once little valued, is now an important plant product, cottonseed oil, cattle feeds, soap, cottolene, fuel oil, and fertilizers being derived from it. Its value in the United States now totals millions of dollars annually.

In growing cotton in America seeds are sown in April, and the beautiful yellow flowers with a red center bloom about June or July, followed in August by the pod. This splits open and is ready for picking by September and October. The plants are grown in rows four feet apart and are set one foot apart in the row. Clean cultivation is absolutely necessary, and in first-class plantations all weeds are kept out. The plant needs a rich deep soil.

HEMP AND CORDAGE

There are a variety of plants which furnish products known as hemp, but commercially only three are of much importance, the plant universally known under that name, the Manila hemp, and sisal. All of them are used chiefly for cordage.

The hemp of the ancients is a tall annual related to our nettles, with rough leaves, and a native of Asia. For centuries an intoxicating drink was made from the herbage of this plant, and this with the narcotic hashish, which is made from a resin exuded by the stems, obscured the fact that Cannabis sativa is a very valuable cordage plant. The coarse fibers are found in the stem, and these are cut and retted, the retting or rotting process separating the fibers from the waste portions of the stem. The fibers are so long and coarse that only cordage, ropes, and a rough cloth are made from them, but enormous quantities are raised for this purpose, especially in Europe. As hashish is now a forbidden product in many countries, due to its dangerous narcotic effects, the hemp plant is more cultivated for fiber than for the narcotic. But in the olden days hashish had a tremendous vogue in the Orient and was known at the time of the Trojan wars, about 1500 B.C. Fiber from the plant was almost unknown to the Hebrews, and it was not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that it came into general use. It is now probably as important as sisal, but not as Manila hemp, the most valuable of all cordage plants. The hemp is diœcious and the female plants are taller and mature later than the male. Two cuttings are therefore necessary in each field.

The Manila hemp is derived from a banana (Musa textilis), that is a native of tropical Asia and is much grown in the Philippines. While the fruits of this plant are of very little or no value, the fiber from the long leafstalk is the best cordage material known. Also the finer fibers near the center of the stalk are made up into fabrics, which are rarely seen here, but are said to be almost silky in texture. As a cordage plant, however, Musa textilis is now easily the most important, and from a commercial point of view the Philippine Islands is the only region to produce it in quantity. It has been tried with not much success in India and the West Indies. Methods of extracting the fibers are still very primitive, as it is nearly all scratched out by natives with saw-toothed knives made for the purpose. After the fleshy part of the leafstalk has been separated from the fiber this is merely put out on racks to dry. The finished product has so much value for large cords and ropes that the fiber makes up about half the total exports of the Philippine Islands. Its great strength may be judged from the fact that a rope made from it, only about one inch thick, will stand a strain of over four thousand pounds. No other fiber is anywhere near this in strength and yet of sufficient length to be of use as cordage. There are still thousands of acres suitable for its culture in the Philippines, but the extraction of the fiber awaits some inventive genius who will make a machine for that purpose. Many have tried, but so far the primitive scratching out by natives is the only method in use and it is admitted that it wastes nearly one-third of the fiber. The so-called Manila or brown paper is often made from old and worn-out ropes of Manila hemp, but, as in the case of cordage itself, adulteration with cheaper fibers is common.

From Yucatan, the Bahamas, and some other regions of tropical America comes the most valuable American cordage plant, known as sisal. The fiber is extracted from the thick coarse leaves of a century plant, known as Agave sisalina or Agave rigida, which looks not unlike the century plant so common in cultivation. The plant belongs to the Amaryllis family and is native in tropical America. Thousands of acres are planted to sisal in Yucatan and a machine for scratching out the fiber is in general use. The plant produces each year a crown of eight or ten leaves from three to five feet in height, each tipped with a stout prickle. Unlike the common century plant of our greenhouses there are no marginal prickles on the leaves of the sisal. After extraction the fiber is stretched out on racks to dry and is then ready for manufacture into rope.

JUTE

During the late war the Germans were reported to be sending flour and sugar to their armies pressed into large bricks for the want of bags to ship them in the ordinary way. Gunny sacks, or jute bags, as they are more often called, are made literally by the hundreds of millions, as practically all sugar, coffee, grains and feeds, and fertilizers are shipped in them. Jute is a tall herb, a native of the Old World tropics, but suitable for cultivation in many other tropical regions. Practically all the world’s supply now comes from India, probably because of the cheapness of labor rather than any peculiar virtue of the soil or climate of that country. The plant has been experimentally grown in Cuba with entire success, but labor conditions made cheap production of the fiber impossible.

The jute plant, known as Corchorus capsularis or C. olitorius, grows approximately six to nine feet tall and is an annual, often branching only near the top. They are not very distantly related to our common linden tree. At the proper maturity the whole plant is harvested and the stems are tied into bundles ready for the retting process. Of all fiber processes this is the most difficult, largely because no machine or chemical has yet been found to

The fiber is mostly derived from Corchorus capsularis and from Corchorus olitorius.

extract the fiber of jute, or flax, and this is accomplished by placing the stems in water, which rots out the fleshy part of the stem, leaving the fiber. Some notion of the difficulty of this task in such plants as jute is gained by realizing that over twelve million bales of finished fiber are produced each year, and that the retting may take from two days to a month. The retting process is aided by certain organisms of decay in the water, by the temperature, and by some other factors not yet understood. The process is allowed to go on only long enough to separate flesh from fiber, which makes frequent inspection of the bundles in the filthy water an absolute necessity. At the proper time the natives are able to split off the bark, which contains the fiber, from the stem, and while standing up to the waist in the water, he picks or dashes off with water the remaining impurities. The fiber is then dried on racks and subsequently, under enormous pressure, packed in bales of four hundred pounds each. An average crop would be about two and one-half bales from an acre of jute, so that in India there must be considerably over five million acres devoted to the cultivation of the plant. While for many years this tremendous output of fiber was sent to England for manufacture, power looms were set up in India about the middle of the last century. There are now over three-quarters of a million spindles there, and some jute is sent to the United States for manufacture here.

Next to cotton jute is probably the most important fiber plant in the world. For hundreds of thousands of people in India and in England it is the only source of livelihood. To the inventor who can eliminate or reduce the costly retting process of jute, or of flax, which goes through essentially the same operation, there is waiting a golden future, for it is largely the cheapness of labor and willingness of its natives to stand in the retting pools that has made India the jute region of the world.

Lack of space forbids mention of the many other fiber plants, some of which, like flax, are of large importance. Their fibers are used in a variety of ways and are found in different parts of the plant. A few of these, together with the names of the plants and the regions where they are native, are as follows:

Native	Product	Name of Plant
Bowstring hemp. Sansevieria, several species.	Bowstrings and cordage.	Tropical Africa and Asia.
Coconut palm. Cocos nucifera.	Coir.	Tropical America (?)
Flax. Linum usitatissimum.	Linen.	Europe and Asia.
Kapok. Eriodendron anfractuosum.	Kapok, for stuffing.	India.
New Zealand flax. Phormium tenax.	Cordage.	New Zealand.
Paper mulberry. Broussonetia papyrifera.	Paper pulp in Japan.	Japan.
Pita. Bromelia Pinguin.	Pita fiber, fabrics.	Tropical America.
Queensland hemp. Sida rhombifolia.	Jute substitute.	Tropical regions.
Raffia. Raphia ruffa.	Cloth and for tying.	Madagascar.
Ramie. Boehmeria nivea.	Ramie cloth.	Tropical Asia.
Rattan cane. Calamus rotang.	Rattan, cordage, and coarse cloth.	India.
Rush. Juncus effusus.[2]	Matting in Japan.	North temperate regions.
Sedge. Carex stricta.	Rugs and mattings.	Northern North America.
Spruce. Picea rubens, canadensis, etc.	Paper pulp.	Northern North America.
Willows. Salix, many species.	Basketry.	Temperate regions mostly.

No mention can be made here of the hundreds of fiber plants used by the natives of various parts of the world, some of them probably having great commercial possibilities. The extraction of these fibers by machinery or chemically will open up a large commerce in such plant products, the value of which is now unsuspected or ignored. While the value of cotton, jute, and Manila hemp is reckoned in the hundreds of millions, some of these native fibers are found in plants whose wild supply is almost inexhaustible, and some of which are quite as capable of cultivation as the better known fiber plants. Few fields of inquiry offer greater possibilities to the economic botanist than fibers.