From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bast fibre (fiber) or skin fibre is fibre collected from the Phloem (the "inner bark" or the skin) or bast surrounding the stem of a certain mainly dicotyledonic plant. Most of the technically important bast fibers are obtained from herbs cultivated in agriculture, as for instance flax, hemp or rhamie, but also bast fibers from wild plants, as stinging nettle, and trees as the lime tree, have been used to some extent. Since the valuable fibers are located in the phloem, they must often be separated from the xylem material ("woody core"), and sometimes also from epidermis. The process for this is called retting, and can be performed by microoganisms either on land (nowadays the most important) or in water, or by chemicals (for instance high pH and chelating agents) or by pectinolytic enzymes. In the phloem bast fibers occur in bundles that are glued together by pectin and calcium ions. More intense retting separate the fiber bundles into elementary fibers, that can be several cm long. The bast fibres have often higher tensile strength than other kinds, and are therefore used for textiles (not seldom very exclusive textiles, sometimes in blends with cotton or synthetic fibers) ropes, yarn, paper, composites and burlap. A special property of bast fibers are that the fiber contain a special structure, the fiber node, that represents a weak point. Fiber nodes seems not to be present in seed hairs as cotton.

Examples are:

• Jute
• Industrial hemp
• Flax (Linen)
• Ramie
• Kenaf
• Roselle Hemp
• Rattan
• Soybean fibre
• Okra fibre
• Vine fibre
• Banana fibre

• IJSG

Classification of natural fibres and list of bast fibres.

• Bast Fibre cords in Viking ships

This article about textiles is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.