Conifers
Conifer trees are among the largest and oldest living trees. Some are above 300 feet long and most of the conifers are evergreen plants. There are more than 600 species of this group of plants.
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Deciduous Trees
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Cotton plant is among one of the most important plants to mankind as the products produced from cotton are essential in daily life.
Cotton
Cotton is one of the most important plants to man. For thousands of years, man has been making cloth from cotton fibers. Other parts of the cotton plant are also useful. Cotton linters are short fibers unsuitable for cloth, but they can be used to make cotton wool, paper, plastics and even explosives. Cotton seeds yield valuable oil that is used to make cosmetics, linoleum, paints and soap. The seeds also make good cattle food.
The cotton plant is related to the hollyhock. Although some wild species are perennials, cultivated cotton plants are annuals. During the summer, fruits called bolls develop from the flowers. The bolls ripen and split open to reveal a mass of seeds covered in fibers. The fibers help to scatter the seeds, but the bolls are harvested before this happens. Today harvesting is done by machines in many countries. The bolls are taken to a gin, a machine that removes the fibers from the seeds. The fibers are pressed into bales ready for sale to cotton mills. In the mills, the fibers are spun into yarn. Several of these yarns are wound into a thread, and the thread is woven into cotton.
Cotton has been grown in the United States since the early 1600's. In the early 1800's, the South produced much of the world's cotton. Most of the cotton was grown on large plantations, which were worked by slaves from Africa. The slavery issue became a prime cause of the American Civil War.
From 1892, cotton plants were attacked by the boll weevil, a small insect that spread from Mexico. This pest eats the fibers in the cotton bolls or pods. Today, it is controlled by insecticides but it still does much damage. The leading cotton-producing state is Texas. California, Mississippi and Arkansas produce over a million bales a year.
The United States is the world's leading cotton-growing country, followed by the USSR and communist China. Other important producers are Brazil, Egypt, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Sudan and Turkey.
