76 STUDIES IN GUJARAT COTTONS 
Northern Gujarat, but the extent of whose cultivation is tending to 
decline. A map showing the varieties of cottons is attached herewith as 
Plate I. Plate IL shows the area and the percentage of cotton area to 
the total cultivated area. 
The variety of Gossypium obtusifolium, which is grown, as we have said, 
sporadically over a large part of the Kaira District and the. northern 
portion of the Godhra Taluka in the Panchmahals, is locally termed 
“Rozi” or ‘ Jadia” cotton. This type has been often described. 
Middleton! in 1895 characterized it as follows and his description fairly 
represents its special features :— 
“This is a perennial, cultivated upon light soils in Northern Gujarat. 
A tall much branched shrub, 6 to 8 feet high, it readily runs wild, and in 
hedgerows assumes a climbing habit. 
“ This cotton is cultivated as a mixture crop, one row being sown between 
ten or twelve rows of some cereal. In the first season it yields little or no 
cotton: in the hot weather it is cut down to one foot of the ground, in the ~ 
second monsoon it grows luxuriantly and produces a full crop in the following 
hot season. The cotton in subsequent years is of coarser quality than that 
of the second, and the plant is usually rooted out at the end of the third or 
fourth season, but it is occasionally allowed to grow for six or seven years. 
When growing wild in hedgerows the cotton turns yellow, and very short in 
staple ; the fuzz at the same time becomes long. ozi is markedly different 
from the annual cottons and does not seem to hybridize with them. It 
strongly resembles Gossypium arboreum, the chief difference being a yellow 
flower and the absence of the marked reddish tinge possessed by this 
species.”’ 
As has already been stated, the cultivation of this cotton is declining. 
It produces a lint of fairly long staple, which is, however, very coarse, and 
is almost entirely used locally in Northern Gujarat. Its value is much 
decreased owing to the unripe condition in which it is usually picked. It 
has probably little or no future, and while it will continue to be grown, yet 
its cultivation hardly affects the larger interests of cotton growing in the 
province. It occupies nearly 7,000 acres in the Kaira District. 
The type of Gossypium neglectum, which has in recent years extended 
over the greater part of Kathiawar, and especially of Bhavnagar, is known 
as “‘Mathio.” In the British districts of Gujarat, it is found to any great 
extent only in the western portions of the Dhandhuka Taluka and the 
1 Agricultural Ledger, 1895, no. 8, 
