A wide range of plants, including cotton, kapok, jute, flax, ramie, sisal, and hemp, may be used to produce plant fibre and many fibre plants are grown as field crops to make paper, cloth, and rope.
The types of plant fibre include seed fibres, bast fibres and hard fibres.
Seed fibres are collected from seeds or seed cases. e.g. cotton and kapok. Read more about seed fibres.
Bast fibres are collected from the inner bark or bast surrounding the stem of the plant. These fibres have higher tensile strength than other fibres. Therefore, these fibres are used for durable yarn, fabric, packaging, and paper. Examples are flax, jute, kenaf, hemp and ramie. Read more about bast fibres. Hard fibres are collected from leaves, e.g. sisal, banana and agave, or from fruit, e.g. coir around the hard shell of coconuts.
The most used plant fibres are cotton, flax and hemp, although sisal, jute, kenaf, bamboo and coconut are also widely used.
Plant fibre is composed mainly of cellulose and cellulose fibres are most commonly used to make paper and cloth. Cellulose produces long, often highly lustrous fibres when suitably prepared.