FIBER PLANTS 



FLAX 



293 



few miles south of Mayaguez. The palm leaves are 

 treated very much like those of the jipi-japa. The 

 weaving is done by women and girls in their own 

 homes. The center of the industry is at Cabo 

 Rojo, where the open plaza in the center of the 

 town is devoted to drying and bleaching the leaves. 

 Straw braids for hats are made from different 

 kinds of straw. Wheat and allied species are used 

 extensively in southern Europe and also in China. 

 In Europe . the straw is grown chiefly in the prov- 

 inces of Tuscany, Modena and Vienza, in northern 

 Italy. The seed is sown thickly, and the straw is 

 pulled up by the roots before maturity. • After dry- 

 ing, the upper joints, the only part used for fine 

 braids, are removed by hand, sorted and tied in 

 bundles. This straw is used for the Tuscan, Leg- 

 horn, Venetian and Swiss braids, extensively used 

 for hats for both men and women. Rye is also 

 grown in Italy, where it is treated much like 

 wheat for the production of a plaiting straw. Bar- 

 ley and rice are cultivated in Japan for the pro- 

 duction of Japanese straw braid, which is exported 

 in large quantities to the United States. 



IIL Upholstery and Stuffing Fibers 



This group includes a large number of fibrous 

 materials of vegetable origin. The straw of flax, 

 grown for seed and threshed in an ordinary grain- 

 threshing machine, thus ruining it for textile pur- 

 poses, is put through a series of fluted rollers, 

 which crush it and fit it for a coarse stufling 

 material used in couches, car seats and carriage 

 cushions. 



Grin vegetal is a fiber obtained from a small 

 palm, Chamcerops humilis, native in Algeria and 

 cultivated in southern Europe. The leaves of the 

 plant are shredded and the strands twisted into a 

 coarse yarn, making, when picked open, an elastic 

 material somewhat like curled hair. A similar 

 material is also made from the leaves of the saw 

 palmetto, which grows in great abundance over 

 hundreds of acres in Florida and westward along 

 the gulf coast of Texas. 



Florida moss (Dendropogon, or Tillandsia, usne- 

 oides), not a true moss, but a flowering epiphytic 

 plant of the same family as the pineapple, grows in 

 abundance on trees along rivers and bayous in the 

 coast region from the Dismal Swamp of Virginia 

 to Florida and Mexico. When abundant it is very 

 injurious to the trees on which it grows, often be- 

 coming a serious pest in orange groves. In many 

 places in Florida it is collected, and placed in heaps 

 until fermented to loosen the outer covering, which 

 is removed by running it through a crude machine 

 consisting essentially of a revolving toothed cylin- 

 der and toothed concaves. The tough inner fibrous 

 material resembling horse-hair is extensively used 

 for cushions and mattresses. 



Kapok is a soft cotton-like down growing in the 

 seed-pods of the silk-cotton trees, Ceiba pentandra, 

 Ceiba grandiflora and Bombax malabarieum, native 

 in the tropics of both hemispheres. Although 

 abundant in many parts of the tropics, nearly all 

 of the kapok of commerce comes from the Dutch 



East Indies and Ceylon. The pods are collected 

 from the wild trees, and the down separated from 

 the outer covering and from most of the seeds and 

 packed for shipment. It is too short and brittle 

 for spinning, but it is Very light, fiuft'y and elastic, 

 making an excellent substitute for feathers for 

 cushions, pillows and mattresses; and it is also used 

 in place of cork and hair in life-preservers. 



Literature. 



Herbert R. Carter, The Spinning and Twisting of 

 Long Vegetable Fibers, London, 1904 ; Charles 

 Richards Dodge, A Descriptive Catalogue of Useful 

 Fiber Plants of the World, Washington, 1897; 

 John W. Gilmore, Preliminary Report on Commer- 

 cial Fibers of the Philippines, Manila, 1903 ; Wil- 

 liam I. Hannan, Textile Fibers of Commerce, Lon- 

 don, 1902 ; J. Forbes Royle, The Fiber Plants of 

 India, London, 1855 ; Jose C. Segura, El Maguey, 

 Memoria sobre el cultivo y beneficip de sus pro- 

 ductos, Mexico, 1901 ; M. Vetillart, Etudes sur les 

 fibres vSgetales employees dans I'industrie, Paris, 

 1876 ; Julius Zipser, Textile Raw Materials and 

 Their Conversion into Yarns, London, 1901 ; Vege- 

 table Fibers, Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, 

 Additional Series II, Royal Gardens, Kew, 1898. 

 Rafael Barba, El Henequen en Yucatan, Mexico, 

 1905 ; Harold H. Mann, Sisal-Hemp Culture in the 

 Indian Tea Districts, Calcutta, 1904 ; T. F. Hunt, 

 The Forage and Fiber Crops in America, 1907. 



FLAX. Linum usitatissimum, Linn. Linacem. 

 Linum (Latin), Linon (Greek), Lein (German), 

 Lin (French), Llin (Celtic). It is from these 

 names that we get our common words, linen, 

 lint, linseed and line. The specific Latin name 

 means "most useful." [See also Fiber Plants.] 

 Figs. 405-410. 



By C. P. BM. 



Flax is annual, grown for the fiber of the bast 

 and the oil of the seeds. It grows one to four feet 

 tall. Flowers are borne in cyraose inflorescences 



Fig. 405. The flax flower, a, open flower and bnd just open 

 ing; b, petals removed, showing close relation of anthers 

 and stigmas; c, anther and pollen; d, stamen; e, pistil; 

 /.petal; d, plan of flower; A, section showing arrangement 

 of parts. 



and are distinctly 5-parted in every respect ; sta- 

 mens 10, monodelphous ; stigma 5-parted ; sepals 

 5; petals 5, blue, sometimes white; each loculus 

 of the ovary is incompletely halved and bears 2 



