Botany of Linen

Botany of Linen

It is not certain that the people who pioneered in making clothes, but, the origin of clothes dates back to somewhere between 100,000 - 500,000 years. That is when people started wearing clothes. First, the clothes were made up of natural elements such as animal fur, leaves, grass, bones, shells and etc.  However, with the time being, people started using flax plants to make clothes. Flax is considered the oldest fiber that is known to have been used by people. 

Flax (Linum usitatissimum) is a flowering plant that belongs to the family Linaceae. Flax is a genus of approximately 200 species. They are native to subtropical and temperate countries in the world. It is an annual plant that grows up about 3 - 4 ft tall, with bluish-green leaves and pale blue flowers and sometimes white, yellow, and red. The fruits are small dry capsules made up of five lobes. The stalks are slender and the branches are concentrated at the top. This plant is adapted to a variety of climates and soil but best adapted to well-drained sandy loom and temperate climates with a long period of daylight. 

Flax is grown mainly for seeds to produce linseed oil and flax fibers to produce linen. These flax fibers are considered bast fibers which means that they are made up of cellulose fibers that grow inside the phloem or the inner bark of the plants. 

However, it is necessary to determine the purpose of cultivating flax, either to seeds or fibers. Because depending on the purpose, the maturity stage that should harvest flax changes. If flax is harvested to produce oil, then it should be harvested after the seed germination. But, flax is ready to be harvested for fibers, when the stems begin to turn yellow and seeds turn brown and harvesting should be done before the seed germination.