LINACEiE-FLAX FAMILY 



FLAX 



Ltnum. 



The genus Linum is credited in the books with about eighty 

 species, which fall into two groups, annual and perennial, and all 

 possess certain family characteristics. All have herbaceous, -sub- 

 woody stems, alternate leaves, flowers made on the plan of five: 

 five sepals, five petals, five stamens, and a five-celled ovary which 

 sometimes becomes ten-celled. The fruit is a globular capsule 

 and the seeds are compressed. 



Common Flax, Linum usitaHssimutn, the most useful, is indeed 

 worthy of its specific name. Its native land no man knows; 

 evidently it has clothed the world in linen since the dawn of civ- 

 ilization. Its use ante-dated the founding of Babylon, its fibres 

 are among the remains of the lake-dwellings of Switzerland. 

 Herodotus described it; Pliny extolled it. 



This most useful plant is an annual herb, its smooth, slender 

 stem growing to the height of two to three feet. The leaves are 

 lance-linear, acute, an inch and a half long. The bright-blue 

 flowers are borne at the summit of the stem on slender pedicels in 

 a loose cluster. 



The one thing which makes this apparently insignificant plant 

 of such transcendent value to the world is that the stem pro- 

 duces* a cortical fibre ^'ust strong enough and not too strong to ' 

 make a thread which can be woven into cloth. Undoubtedly 

 prehistoric man made the discovery, for historic, man has been 

 using it all his recorded life. 



The seeds contain a fixed emollient oil which is very drying, 

 heiiCe used by painters. 



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