Fiber (botany)

“ There really is no perceptible reason why the fiber should become weaker through fructification, which simply consists in the fact of the contents of the vascular cells changing into soluble matter, and gradually oozing away, the consequence of which is that the cells of the fiber are not replenished. These, on the contrary, acquire additional strength with the age of the plant, because the emptied cells cling so firmly together, by means of a certain resinous deposit, that it is impossible to obtain them unbroken without a great deal of trouble. ”

“ There is a considerable list of plants, however, which are the subject of frequent inquiry, but which will never be utilized commercially as long as other more useful fibers hold the market. These for the most part produce bast fiber, and the farmer knows them as wild field growths or weeds. They are interesting in themselves, and many of them produce a fair quality of fiber, but to what extent they might be brought into cultivation, or how economically the raw material might be prepared, are questions the details of which only experiment can determine. ”

“ In our own country it would be possible to enumerate twenty species of plants that are recognized as American weeds, the fibers of which could be employed as hemp, flax, or jute substitutes were these materials unobtainable, besides half as many structural fiber plants similar to the agave, the products of which could be employed as cordage fiber substitutes in the same manner. Many of these uncultivated plants have been known to the aborigines for years, possibly for centuries, as we find their fiber, produced in varied forms of rude manufacture, in ancient tombs or other burial places. ”

“ From the bast fibers of the stem of this herb linen cloth is made.
Flax grown for fiber.
Vegetable Oils.—Some of the same plants which give fiber also produce oil. Cotton seed oil pressed from the seeds, linseed oil from the seeds of the flax plant, and coconut oil (the covering of the nut here producing the fiber) are examples.
Some Harmful Green Plants.—We have seen that on the whole green plants are useful to man. There are, however, some that [Pg 128] are harmful. For example, the poison ivy is extremely poisonous to touch. ”

“ The growth of the 'pole' is followed by the death of the plant. The process of fiber extraction consists in separating the fibrovascular bundles from the pulpy portion of the leaf. Where machines are used for this work, the leaf is run under the surface of rapidly revolving wheels or rollers which scrape the pulp from the fiber. In the Philippines the fiber is extracted by the process known as 'retting.' The mature leaves are harvested and tied in bunches. ”

“ The Sisal hemp machines are too rough in action for so fine a fiber, and, at the rate of ten leaves to the pound, working up a ton of the material would mean the handling of over twenty thousand leaves to secure perhaps three dollars' worth of the commercial product. Were the fiber utilized in the arts, however, and its place established, it would compete in a measure with flax as a spinning fiber, for its filaments are divisible to the ten-thousandth of an inch. ”

“ Animal fibers like silk, wool, and feathers, and some vegetable fibers like straw, cannot be bleached by means of chlorine, because it attacks not only the coloring matter but the fiber itself, and leaves it shrunken and inferior. Cotton and linen fibers, apart from the small amount of coloring matter present in them, contain nothing but carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, while animal fibers contain in addition to these elements some compounds of nitrogen. ”

“ Cellulose, or woody fiber, is the basis of all vegetable cell walls. Cotton fiber represents almost pure cellulose. From it are made paper and woven tissues. In paper manufacture, woody fiber is made into a pulp, washed, bleached, filtered, hot- pressed, and sometimes glazed. Parchment paper, vegetable parchment, is made by dipping unglazed paper for half a minute into cold dilute H2SO4, 1 part H2O, 2 1/2 parts H2SO4, and then washing. The fiber, by chemical change, is thus toughened. The cell walls of wood are impure cellulose ”

“ The linen fiber is obtained from the flax plant. Certain fibers, such as flax, jute, and ramie, are obtained from the stem of the plant, hence are known as bast fibers, and flax is the most important bast fiber.
2. It is difficult to separate the flax or linen fiber from the woody part of the stem. The process is called retting, which is really rotting by soaking the stem in water.
3. Before the fibers are entirely free from the woody part of the plant they undergo the processes of beating, breaking, scutching, hackling, etc. ”

“ If the fibre has been properly moistened there will be no need to give water until the shoots are an inch or so long, but the fibre must not be allowed to go dry, or the flower-buds become ‘blind.’ The surface of the fibre should always look moist, but if too much water has been given the bowl may be held carefully on its side so that the surplus water can drain away. As the growth increases more water will be required and all the light possible must be given to insure sturdy foliage. ”

“ Muck or peat soils are not recommended for the production of high-quality hemp fiber. The quantity of fiber produced per acre on these soils may be very high, but experience has demonstrated that the fiber lacks strength, which is the first requirement of hemp fiber for good cordage.
The inexperienced farmer usually gets advice from an experienced hemp-mill superintendent in the selection of the right soil. In fact, the farmer's contract to grow hemp usually specifies the exact field that it has been mutually agreed should be used for the hemp crop. ”

“ In India it is chiefly for the resin, "haschisch, churrus, bhang." (That was the drug used by the Count of Monte Cristo.) In Russia it is for the seed and the fibre that the plant is cultivated, and in France, Italy, and Austria the fibre seems to be the most important product.
Some of the plants produce only stamens or male flowers. The fibre given by these is stronger and more tenacious than that of the female plant, which, however, is finer and more supple. The fibre obtained from the cold northern districts of Russia is said to be the strongest of all. ”

“ The yield of fibre from this class of Endogens ranges from 6 to 12 per cent., and it is only where native labour is exceedingly cheap and abundant that such a laborious and tedious process could be carried on.
The majority of the fibres from Exogenous plants [p.30] are also, in somewhat a similar manner obtained solely by manual labour; the herbaceous, or woody stems of such plants, being first steeped, or retted, to induce partial fermentation, and facilitate the separation of the corticular fibres, from the woody stem. ”

“ By repeated scraping in this way the soft cellular matter which surrounds the fibre is removed, and the fibre so cleaned has only to be hung up to dry in the open air, when, without further treatment, it is ready for use. Each stock yields, on an average, a little under 1 ℔ of fibre; and two natives cutting down plants and separating fibre will prepare not more than 25 ℔ per day. The fibre yielded by the outer layer of leaf-stalks is hard, fully developed and strong, and used for cordage, but the produce of the inner stalks is increasingly thin, fine and weak. ”

“ Here and there are to be found hemp-plants which give a whiter fibre than others, whilst some assert that there are three or four kinds of hemp-plant; but in general all will yield commercial first-class hemp (Abacá corriente) , and if the native could be coerced to cut the plant at maturity—draw the fibre under a toothless knife during the same day of stripping the petioles—lodge the fibre as drawn on a clean place, and sun-dry it on the first opportunity, then (the proprietors and dealers positively assert) the output of third-quality need not exceed 5 to 6 per cent. ”

“ Hemp is an annual plant that grows from seed each year, and therefore it can be brought readily into production. It produces twice as much fiber per acre as flax, the only other fiber that is its equal in strength and durability and that is known to be suitable for culture and preparation on machinery in this country. ”

“ Other Fibers While the fibers we have already discussed—Manila and Sisal—comprise by far the greater part of the raw material of cordage, we wish to mention in this chapter a fiber which, while now of comparatively slight importance, has the interesting feature of being a home product, and the cultivation of which at one time formed an industry of considerable magnitude in this country. ”

“ If we make a section of the stalk of a leaf, we shall find that in some cases the woody fibers are collected in the middle, while in others there are several distinct bundles, separated by cellular parenchyma. My first idea was that each of the primary ribs of a leaf might represent a separate woody fiber in the leaf-stalk, so that leaves with a single bundle of woody fibers would be pinnate; those with several distinct bundles, palmate. ”

“ Dry hemp stalks should be tested when possible to determine the degree of retting. Three to six stalks are taken in both hands and bent back and forth to perform the break test. If properly retted, the fiber should not break when the woody core breaks. The hurds should fall free of the fiber in the breaking and shaking between one's hands. If the hemp is only partly retted, some hurds will adhere to the loosened fiber. Unretted hemp fiber is usually green or light yellow. Dew-retted hemp is usually slate gray or black. ”

“ With only two crops per year, and a 4% yield of fibre, the resulting product would nearly reach one-third of a ton per acre. When proper attention is given to the choice of ground, and to planting, there is not much difficulty in the way of raising a good crop; the trouble arises in the extraction of the fibre.
The stems when ripe are cut down, and after the leaves and small branches have been removed, the outer cover and the layers of fibre are stripped off in the form of ribbons. These ribbons contain the bark, the fibre and a quantity of very adhesive gum. ”

“ Manilla [3] yields the strongest of all fibres. Jute, which is the fibre or inside bark of an Indian plant (Corchorus capsularis) , yields a strong fibre, but is very difficult to bleach white. Esparto fibre holds an intermediate place between the fibres just described and those of wood and straw.... The fibre of straw is short, pointed, and polished, and cannot of itself make a strong paper. The nature of wood fibre depends, as may readily be supposed, upon the nature of the wood itself. Yellow pine, for example, yields a fibre long, soft, and flexible, in fact very like cotton ”

“ The best qualities are of a clear whitish-yellow colour, with a fine silky lustre, soft and smooth to the touch, and fine, long and uniform in fibre. When the fibre is intended for goods in the natural colour it is essential that it should be of a light shade and uniform, but if intended for yarns which are to be dyed a dark shade, the colour is not so important. The cultivated plant yields a fibre with a length of from 6 to 10 ft., but in exceptional cases it has been known to reach 14 or 15 ft. in length. The fibre is decidedly inferior to flax and hemp in strength and tenacity ”

“ These fibers constitute the cotton of the market, which finds so many important uses in human economy. Of course primarily nature intended these fibers for the special use of the plant itself; being a means of aiding in the distribution of the seeds, and no doubt also serving as a protection against being eaten by animals, as the dense, more or less intertwined growth of insipid, tenacious fibers constitute anything but a tempting morsel. Man, by his ingenuity and skill, has been enabled to utilize this product of nature in his own behalf. ”

“ The second group—fibers of simple cellular structure—comprises surface fibers, including the down or hairs surrounding exogenous seeds or their envelopes; the hairlike growth found on stems, leaves, and buds; fibrous material produced in the form of epidermal strips from the leaves of palms, etc.; and false fibrous material—mosses and leaves used for packing, and certain fungous growths. It is the consideration of these useful native fibers that makes it possible to enumerate a thousand species of fibrous plants, while the world's commercial fibers would hardly reach a total of fifty species. ”

“ If the fibres which are obtained by each process above-mentioned, are examined, it will be found that those which have undergone the first, are stronger than those of the second, but more labour is necessary; the difference, however, will not be experienced if the fibre is bruised before it is steeped, because this operation accelerates the maceration. The fibre of this, like that of all other plants, is subject to rot, if it is allowed to remain under water for any considerable time. ”

“ Fiber hemp grows successfully on soils of the Clarion, Tama, Carrington, Maury, Hagerstown, and Miami series, which, in general, are deep, medium-heavy loams, well-drained, and high in organic matter. Artificially drained areas of the Webster, Brookston, and Maumee series also give satisfactory yields. These soils are among the most productive soils of the Corn Belt. They produce average yields of 50 to 70 bushels or more of corn per acre. If land will not produce from 50 to 70 bushels of corn per acre, it should not be planted to hemp for fiber production. ”