Natural Fibers

Vegetable fibers were used by ancient man for fishing and trapping. Evidence exists that man made ropes and cords as early as 20,000 B.C. The Egyptians probably produced ropes and cords from reeds, grasses, and flax around 4000 B.C. They later produced matting from vegetable fibers, rushes, reeds, and papyrus grasses bound with flax string.

Vegetable fibers consist of cellulose, i.e., polysaccharides made up of anhydroglucose units joined by an oxygen linkage to form long molecular chains that are essentially linear, bound to lignin, and associated with various amounts of other materials.

Vegetable fibers are classified according to the part of the plant that they come from. The four groupings are: seed-hair fibers, leaf fibers, bast fibers, and miscellaneous fibers.