Cotton: The Fabric of Our Lives :: Botany

Cotton The model of Our LivesOils, balls, swabs, bandages, tissue, paper, napkins, diapers, socks, underwear, shirts, shorts, sweaters, pants, coats, towels, linen, cushions, drapery, upholstery, rugs, carpet, comforters, mattresses, insulation, filtration, and many other(a) things that are used daily by everyone are composed of, or inspired by cotton. Cotton is a soft, fluffy, naturally occurring fiber do that can be processed into an array of materials and goods. Many, many things that we wear, stay on, sleep under, walk on, or utilize in wound-care, etc., contain some portion of cotton. It is a fiber that is used everyday, by everyone, in one personal manner or another. It has qualities that ache made it a choice crop for centuries more or less the world. Today though, cotton is being largely displaced by synthetic fibers that have qualities that exceed the natural crop plant. These fibers can also be fabricate and sold at relatively lower costs. Still, cotton stands alon e as the most utilized fiber crop plant used near the world. Also known as King Cotton, in the United States, it was the major force behind the institution of the American age of slavery, and cotton prevailed as the economic source for the southern states of the United States and its antebellum prosperity sooner the civil war. It holds an important place in Americas past, present, and future. Cotton is truly the Fabric of Our Lives. Characteristics Cotton is an annual, biennial or perennial plant, but in finis it is generally treated as an annual herbaceous to short shrub or small tree - two to six feet tall. It consist of a primary axis, erect and branched with a vegetative lower zona having monopodial branches, and a fruiting upper zone with sympodial branches. The leaves of the cotton plant alternate, unsubdivided petiolate, three to nine lobed and palmately veined, with varying size, texture, shape and hairiness. The large, showy, skim off yellow, red or purple flowers ar e extra axillary, terminal, solitary, and borne on sympodial branches. The calyx (= collectively the sepals) consists of a very short cup-shaped structure at the base of the corolla. The atomic number 23 petals of the corolla are either free or slightly united at the base of the convoluted bud (Sundararaj, 1974). Cotton belongs to Gossypium, a genus named by Linnaeus in the middle of the 18th century. The genus has been classified in both the Malvaceae or mallow family and the Bombacaceae families and in both the Hibsceae and Gossypieae tribes.