Gossypium herbaceum Seeds | Cotton
LATIN NAME: Gossypium herbaceum
COMMON NAME: Cotton
Plant Profile
The part the world calls cotton is the lint, a crown of single-celled hairs that grows from the seed coat and bursts from the ripe boll in a white, fluffy burst that the eye reads as a flower’s afterthought. Each boll holds several compartments of seed, and when it splits open the lint dries into the spinnable mass that built the textile trade; the showy petal that came first is only the preamble.
The leaf is palmate, cut into three to five broad lobes with a pointed tip, and the whole plant carries the look of a small hollyhock because cotton sits in the mallow family alongside okra and hibiscus. The stem is upright and a little woody at the base, and the plant stands as an annual in the field even though its wild relatives can linger.
The flower opens creamy yellow with a maroon blotch at the base of the petal, and as it ages the yellow shifts toward pink and rose before the boll swells behind it. That same pigment spot is a quick field mark for the Old World cottons, and the bloom last only a day before it folds and sets fruit.
Science & Biotechnology
The seed of cotton carries gossypol, a yellow sesquiterpene that protects the embryo from insects and fungi but also makes the raw seed unpalatable to people and most animals. Breeders have long chased low-gossypol lines for food, because the kernel inside is rich protein once the defence chemical is tamed.
The lint is almost pure cellulose laid down as one long cell that twists as it dries, and that twist is what lets the fibres grip each other when spun into thread. The length and fineness of the single cell decide the quality of the yarn, which is why fibre classing weighs staple length above almost everything else.
The wild type of Gossypium herbaceum has a naked, fuzz-free seed tinted by carotenoid pigment, unlike the white fuzzy seed of the improved sorts, and that colour is a handy clue to the species in a seed bank. The pigment also marks the oil fraction, which is pressed from the kernel after the lint is gone.
Uses & Benefits
The crop gives two things: the lint for cloth and the seed for oil and meal, so a cotton field feeds a mill and a press at the same time. The oil is mild and cooks like any vegetable oil, while the leftover meal, once the gossypol is dealt with, is a protein feed.
Cottonseed oil is pressed from the kernel and refined for the table, and the meal that remains is fed to livestock where rules allow, which closes the loop on the plant. The lint, of course, leaves as fibre, so one boll supports a textile line and a food line at once.
Growing from Seed
Cotton is a heat-lover and will sit in the ground if the soil is cool, so sow into warm, rich, well-drained ground after the chill has passed and the bed holds the day’s heat. It is a greedy feeder and a thirsty plant once it flowers, so the site matters more than the sowing trick.
The seed is large and easy to place, so sow it an inch deep in a drill and thin the stand by height, keeping the strongest plants about forty centimetres apart once they stand fifteen centimetres tall. Crowding invites mould in the boll, so air flow around the base pays off at harvest.
Where modules are used, set the young plants out when the stand reaches fifteen centimetres and water them in, since a small, checked transplant flowers late and yields little. Move by plant size, not by a count of weeks, because a cool spell can stall a seedling that a warm one would outrun.
Our Take
Cotton is a sun-hungry field plant, not a patio herb, and I respect the gossypol in the seed and keep it out of the kitchen as raw. It sits in good company with Gossypium herbaceum seed, the okra pair Burgundy Okra Abelmoschus esculentus seed and Okra seed Abelmoschus esculentus, and the mallow cousin Erfurter Marshmallow Althaea officinalis ‘Erfurter’.
Related Reading
Gardeners who grow Cotton often pair it with these related subjects: