Cotton: The Fabric of Our Lives :: Botany

Cotton The Fabric of Our LivesOils, balls, swabs, bandages, tissue, paper, napkins, diapers, socks, underwear, shirts, obliviouss, sweaters, pants, coats, towels, linen, cushions, drapery, upholstery, rugs, carpet, comforters, mattresses, insulation, filtration, and numerous other things that are utilize daily by every iodin are collected of, or inspired by cotton. Cotton is a soft, fluffy, naturally occurring case localize that can be processed into an array of materials and goods. Many, many things that we wear, tranquillity on, sleep under, walk on, or utilize in wound-care, etc., contain nearly percentage of cotton. It is a fiber that is used everyday, by everyone, in one way or another. It has qualities that have made it a choice garnish for centuries around the world. Today though, cotton is being largely displaced by semisynthetic fibers that have qualities that exceed the natural crop plant. These fibers can also be mass-produced and sold at relatively scorn costs . Still, cotton stands all as the most utilized fiber crop plant used around the world. Also known as King Cotton, in the fall in 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 before the civil war. It holds an important place in Americas past, present, and future. Cotton is in truth the Fabric of Our Lives. Characteristics Cotton is an annual, biennial or perennial plant, but in cultivation it is generally treated as an annual herbaceous to short shrub or small tree - two to six feet tall. It be of a primary axis, erect and branched with a vegetative lower zone having monopodial branches, and a fruiting upper zone with sympodial branches. The leaves of the cotton plant alternate, cordate petiolate, three to nine lobed and palmately veined, with varying size, texture, convention and hairiness. The large, showy, cream yel low, red or purple flowers are extra axillary, terminal, solitary, and borne on sympodial branches. The calyx (= collectively the sepals) consists of a very short cup-shaped structure at the menial of the corolla. The five 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 mallow family or mallow family and the Bombacaceae families and in both the Hibsceae and Gossypieae tribes.