Flax, also known as common flax or line, is a flowering plant, Linum usitatissimum, in the family Linaceae. It is cultivated as a food and fiber crop in regions of the world with temperate climates. Textiles made from flax are known in English as linen and are traditionally used for bed sheets, underclothes, and table linen. Its seeds are known as flaxseed or linseed and its oil is known as linseed oil. In addition to referring to the plant, the word "flax" may refer to the unspun fibers of the flax plant. The plant species is known only as a cultivated plant and appears to have been domesticated just once from the wild species Linum bienne, called pale flax. The plants called "flax" in New Zealand are, by contrast, members of the genus Phormium.
Names and etymology The term 'flax' can refer to both the plant and the fibres of it, and is derived from Old English: fleax, from Proto-Germanic: *flahso. It is cognate with terms in other West Germanic languages, including Old Frisian: flax and German: flachs. From it are derived terms such as 'flaxseed' ('seed of the flax plant') and 'flaxen' ('made from flax', 'the colour of flax flowers', 'the colour of woven flax: especially in reference to hair'. An alternative name is 'line' from Old English: lín, which is cognate with words in other Germanic languages such as Old Norse: lín, and its modern derivative Swedish: lin, along with Gothic: lein and Dutch: lijn. While this name for the plant is less common than 'flax', it is often used in the derived 'linen' ('cloth woven from flax') and the compound noun 'linseed' ('seeds of the flax plant').
Description Several other species in the genus Linum are similar in appearance to L. usitatissimum, cultivated flax, including some that have similar blue flowers, and others with white, yellow, or red flowers. Some of these are perennial plants, unlike L. usitatissimum, which is an annual plant. Cultivated flax plants grow to 1.2 m (4 ft) tall, with slender stems. The leaves are glaucous green, slender lanceolate, 2–4 cm (3⁄4–1+1⁄2 in) long, and 3 mm broad. The flowers are 15–25 mm in diameter with five petals, which can be coloured white, blue, yellow, and red depending on the species. The fruit is a round, dry capsule 5–9 mm in diameter, containing several glossy brown seeds shaped like apple pips, 4–7 mm long.
Taxonomy The scientific name for flax was coined by Carl Linnaeus in his book Species Plantarum in 1753.
Varieties According to Plants of the World Online the flax species has two botanical varieties, Linum usitatissimum var. usitatissimum and Linum usitatissimum var. stenophyllum.
Cultivation Flax is native to the region extending from the eastern Mediterranean to India and was first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent. The soils most suitable for flax, besides the alluvial kind, are deep loams containing a large proportion of organic matter. Flax is often found growing just above the waterline in cranberry bogs. Heavy clays are unsuitable, as are soils of a gravelly or dry sandy nature. Farming flax requires few fertilizers or pesticides. The plant can reach a height of around 3 feet.
History
The earliest evidence of humans using wild flax as a textile comes from the present-day Republic of Georgia, where spun, dyed, and knotted wild flax fibers found in Dzudzuana Cave date to the Upper Paleolithic, 30,000 years ago. Humans first domesticated flax in the Fertile Crescent region. Evidence exists of a domesticated oilseed flax with increased seed-size from Tell Ramad in Syria and flax fabric fragments from Çatalhöyük in Turkey by c. 9,000 years ago. Use of the crop steadily spread, reaching as far as Switzerland and Germany by 5,000 years ago. In China and India, domesticated flax was cultivated at least 5,000 years ago. Flax was cultivated extensively in ancient Egypt, where the temple walls had paintings of flowering flax, and mummies were embalmed using linen. Egyptian priests wore only linen, as flax symbolized purity. Phoenicians traded Egyptian linen throughout the Mediterranean and the Romans used it for their sails. As the Roman Empire declined, so did flax production. But with laws designed to publicize the hygiene of linen textiles and the health of linseed oil, Charlemagne revived the crop in the eighth century CE. Eventually, Flanders became the major center of the European linen industry in the Middle Ages. In North America, colonists introduced flax, and it flourished there, but by the early 20th century, cheap cotton and rising farm wages had caused production of flax to become concentrated in northern Russia, which came to provide 90% of the world's output. Since then, flax has lost its importance as a commercial crop, due to the easy availability of more inexpensive synthetic fibres.
Diseases
Production
In 2022, world production of raw or retted flax was 875,995 tonnes, led by France with 75% of the total. One of the largest regions in France for flax production is Normandy with nearly one-third of the world's production.
Harvesting
Maturation Flax is harvested for fiber production after about 100 days, or a month after the plants flower, and two weeks after the seed capsules form. The bases of the plants begin to turn yellow. If the plants are still green, the seed will not be useful, and the fiber will be underdeveloped. The fiber degrades once the plants turn brown. Flax grown for seed is allowed to mature until the seed capsules are yellow and just starting to split; it is then harvested in various ways. A combine harvester may either cut only the heads of the plants, or the whole plant. These are then dried to extract the seed. The amount of weeds in the straw affects its marketability, and this, coupled with market prices, determines whether the farmer chooses to harvest the flax straw. If the flax straw is not harvested, typically, it is burned, since the stalks are quite tough and decompose slowly (i.e., not in a single season). Formed into windrows from the harvesting process, the straw often clogs up tillage and planting equipment. Flax straw of insufficient quality for fiber use can be baled to build shelters for farm animals, sold as biofuel, or removed from the field in the spring. Two ways are used to harvest flax fiber, one involving mechanized equipment (combines), and the second method, is more manual and targets maximum fiber length.
Harvesting for fiber
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