6 natural plant fibers

Date: 2025/02/08 By: Zoe Zhu

Over the last hundred years, the world’s population has grown quickly. People’s living standards have improved, and industrial and agricultural technologies have developed. As a result, the demand for textile fibers keeps rising. Also, the need for different qualities in textile raw materials has grown. The output of traditional natural textiles like cotton and wool is limited. Factors like climate, planting methods, and the breeding environment restrict production. So, increasing output is very hard.

Synthetic fibers are great for textile processing. But they come from non-renewable resources like petroleum and coal. Producing, using, and then abandoning these fibers pollutes the environment and harms human health. Textile raw materials are now a key factor limiting the textile industry’s growth.

Production, processing, and use of natural plant fibers basically do not cause much harm to the human body and the earth. The products can be naturally degraded after being discarded and have little impact on the ecological balance of nature. Humans used natural flax fibers to make linen thread 32,000 years ago, which was used to sew clothes and weave various handicrafts. China has a long history of using natural plant fibers, especially ramie and hemp.

There were linen prints on earthenware in the Neolithic period. There are records of retting ramie in the Book of Songs: “The land of Dongmen can be used for retting ramie” (Chen Feng). Natural plant fibers are closely related to human life. Natural plant fibers are essential for many products. They are used in textiles, ropes, packaging, weaving, paper, plastics, and even explosives.

Statistics show that nature produces about 100 billion tons of cellulose each year. This amount is much greater than the total oil reserves on Earth. A large amount of natural cellulose resources have not been effectively utilized in the biological cycle. As people become more aware of environmental protection and seek comfort in textiles, using new natural plant fibers is now a key trend.

Plant fiber is a thick-walled tissue widely distributed in seed plants. Its cells are slender, with sharp ends, thick secondary walls, and often have single pits in the walls. There are generally no living protoplasts when mature. Plant fiber mainly plays a mechanical support role in plants.
Plant fibers are found in stems, leaves, roots, peels, seeds, and more. They can be divided into these types:

1. natural plant fibers-Bast fibers

In some dicotyledonous plants, like mulberry, paper mulberry, and elm, bast fibers grow well. These fibers can serve as raw materials for special paper. Hemp has herbaceous stems, like ramie, flax, and jute. These stems contain special bast fiber bundles. Usually, people separate these bundles from the main stem by retting. They can also strip them off by hand or with machines. Bast fibers are strong and popular. They are used to make ropes, packaging, thick industrial cloth, and clothing textiles.

2. Wood fibers

Wood fibers are wood fibers found in tree trunks, such as those in pine, fir, poplar, and willow. Pulp made from wood is an important raw material for the production of regenerated cellulose fibers.

3. Leaf fiber and stem fiber

Leaf fiber is mainly found in the veins of monocots. The cell wall is highly lignified and hard in texture. It is called hard fiber, such as sisal. This type of fiber has high strength and strong corrosion resistance. It is mainly used to make ship ropes, mining ropes, canvas, conveyor belts, protective nets, and can also be used to weave sacks, carpets, etc.

Stalk fiber: Some monocot stems have particularly developed bast fiber bundles. These fibers have little or no lignification and are called soft fibers, such as wheat straw, reeds, dragon beard grass, and Ula grass. After basic physical and chemical treatment, they can be used to make straw shoes, mattresses, mats, and baskets. Also, they can be used to make regenerated cellulose fiber and paper.

4. Root fiber

There are generally fewer fibers in plant roots, but some plant roots can also be used, such as iris. The rhizome of iris is short and thick, and the fibrous roots are long and hard. Besides medicinal use, it can also be used to make brushes.

5. Peel fiber

The peel of some plant fruits is rich in fiber, such as coconut. Coconut shell fiber has high strength but poor softness. It is mainly used in geotextiles and home textiles. For example, it is woven into nets for sand control and slope protection. It can also be bonded with latex and other adhesives to create thin mats, sofa mats, sports mats, and car mats.

6. Seed fiber

Seed fiber is a single-cell fiber grown from the epidermal cells of plant seeds, such as cotton, kapok, and catkins. Cotton is currently an important civilian textile raw material in the world, and kapok and catkins are mainly used as fillers.