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Gossypium hirsutum- Cotton
(Malvaceae)
Dicotyledon, annual, perennial or sub-shrub to 2 1/2 feet
tall. Flower white, turns to cream and pink in later stages of
growth. Seed hairs (cotton) white in color and long. This native
of Central America is the common cotton of cultivation in the
southern United States. It is an allotetraploid mixture of an
African genome and New World genome. How this could have occurred
has led to much phylogeographic speculation. Proposals have included
antiquity so great that continental drift was involved.
Cotton is the world's most important non-food crop commodity.
One pound of cotton contains roughly 100 million individual seed
hairs and each hair is made of a single cell that is 3000 times
longer than its width! Cotton provides us with prime materials
for making fabrics, bandages and wound dressing. Cotton seed
provides us with oil used in soap production and for cooking.
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