XVIII 



FIBER CROPS 



COTTON 



Varieties and Improvement 



416. Species. Index Kewensis recognizes 24 species of 

 cotton with 88 synonyms. Linnaeus classified cotton into three 

 ppecies : barbadense, herbaceum and arboreum, the latter being 

 the tree cotton of Asia. 1 Under this classification sea island, 

 Egyptian and Peruvian cotton would fall within the first-class 

 and American upland and India cotton would fall in the second 

 class. It may be doubted whether the wild prototypes of the 

 cultivated species have ever been recognized. 



"The great variability and the tendency to hybridize make it difficult to 

 determine to which species a given plant may belong. No cultivated plant 

 responds so quickly to ameliorated conditions of soil, climate, and cultivation 

 as the cotton plant, and to this fact is due much of the confusion as to species 

 and varieties. Another factor entering into the confusion is the imperfectly 

 known types that have been described as species. It has been stated that 

 some of the species widely cultivated are wholly unknown in a wild state, and 

 some of the specimens described by Linnaeus were in all probability from 

 plants that had long been in cultivation. The work of establishing the origin 

 of the cultivated species has been still further complicated by the exchange 

 of seed from country to country that has been going on for at least four 

 centuries. 2 



In the classification given below the United States Bureau 

 of Plant Industry is followed. 3 



1 Some of the cotton grown in Peru is of the arboreum type. 

 2U. S. Dept. Agr., Off. Expt. Sta. Bui. No. 33 (1896), p. 68. 

 U. S. Dept. Agr. Yearbook 1903, p. 388. 



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