616 Philippine Journal of Science 1919 
TABLE XXV.—Physical tests of rope made from the bast of Grewia 
bilamellata—Continued. 
Mean ultimate tensile strength per unit area (dry): 
Kilograms per square centimeter 320 
Pounds per square inch 4,570 
Mean ultimate tensile strength per unit area (wet): 
Kilograms per square centimeter 180 
Pounds per square inch 2,570 
Mean elongation at instant of rupture: 
Dry (per cent) 11 
Wet (per cent) 11 
Mean weight per unit length: 
Grams per meter 32.6 
Pounds per foot 0.0219 
Average breaking length: 
Meters 8,810 
Feet 12,500 
Moisture (per cent) 8.91 
GREWIA ERIOCARPA Juss. Balitnong. 
Local names: Balibdégo (Batangas); baria-an (Union) ; bariw-an (Abra, 
Ilocano, Itneg, Nueva Ecija, and Pangasinan); lanit, lapni, lapnit, lapi 
(Cagayan). 
A shrub or small tree with ovate, densely pubescent leaves, 
usually oblique, beneath white or nearly so; capsules densely 
hairy; widely distributed in the Philippines at low altitudes. 
Grewia eriocarpa bast seems to be immune from the attack 
of the ordinary gray, green, and black molds that grow profusely 
on most of the other basts. The bast is wood brown; the 
strips vary from 2 to 5 millimeters in width and from 0.25 
to 0.69 millimeter in thickness; they average 1,004 millimeters 
in length. Each strand of the rope averages nine strips thick. 
When dry the rope made of Grewia eriocarpa bast gives a 
medium tensile strength and breaking length. Wetting weakens 
the fiber about 3 per cent. The maximum variation from the 
mean tensile strength of the values obtained from the five wet 
specimens was 34 per cent, which indicates very poor agreement; 
whereas the corresponding value for the five dry test pieces was 
19 per cent. Three of the five wet, and two of the five dry, 
test specimens failed in eye-splices. The minimum value in 
both series was given by test pieces rupturing in splices. Owing 
to its scarcity, the use of Grewia eriocarpa bast for the manu- 
facture of cordage is infrequent. 
A summary of the tests of this species made in the Bureau 
of Science is given in Table XXVI. 
