Most plant fibres that we use are phloem fibres. They carry water up the stems and through long leaves like sisal. Flax, hemp, nettle, ramie, bast fibres, all come into that category.
Then there are the fibres that the plant produces to disperse it's seeds and the ones used to make webs or attach to rocks, etc., or the ones we make from tendons.
Cotton is a dispersal fibre, and it's a tiny short fibre. If you have cotton fibre of an inch long, then that's considered long staple. We have cultivate cotton so much that the boll now is very much 'over stuffed' with fibre to seed.
It doesn't 'carry' water, and there's no way on this green earth that we can make every cotton fibre lie the same way round when it's spun and plied.
So, it's not the sooking up wax ability of the individual fibres, and it comes down to spin and ply and plait and how that is finished off.
If you turn a plied bit of string around, it's spin will still be going the same way
M
Then there are the fibres that the plant produces to disperse it's seeds and the ones used to make webs or attach to rocks, etc., or the ones we make from tendons.
Cotton is a dispersal fibre, and it's a tiny short fibre. If you have cotton fibre of an inch long, then that's considered long staple. We have cultivate cotton so much that the boll now is very much 'over stuffed' with fibre to seed.
It doesn't 'carry' water, and there's no way on this green earth that we can make every cotton fibre lie the same way round when it's spun and plied.
So, it's not the sooking up wax ability of the individual fibres, and it comes down to spin and ply and plait and how that is finished off.
If you turn a plied bit of string around, it's spin will still be going the same way
M
