The other day I was talking to someone who said flax fiber goes from the root to the top of the plant and that is why people pull flax. Have you actually seen fibers in the roots of flax plants or is this something you read or heard from others? I know it is a common statement on websites and in books but our Biolin Research lab, when it was running, went through about 10,000 samples of various fiber and oilseed flax stems from different years and different locations when we were making our NIR database for fiber content. We never saw fiber in the roots. The fiber always started where the first true leaves of the plant start growing, which is about an inch above the ground.
I believe this “fact”(?) got started when someone asked why flax is pulled instead of cut and the answer from someone who was thinking of cutting about four inches above the ground said “to get all the fiber” meaning that to get all the fiber in the remaining three inches of the stem (above the true leaves level). The person who asked the question interpreted it as meaning that the roots must have fibers which is, as far as my experience tells me, not the correct interpretation of “to get all the fiber”.
I think flax is pulled because:
1) when you are on your knees cutting flax with a sickle, as they might have tried for thousands of years, you try cutting three or four inches above the ground where the oldest, most filled, and hence strongest fibers are located. It is very hard to cut; then you try to pull and pulling is actually easier than hand cutting unless you are in heavy clay soils.
2) when flax is pulled, you can lay the stems touching the ground where the flax was pulled, which, in my experience, speeds up retting compared to have the stems sitting on stubble that is one to four inches high.
NOTE: I do think that technology exists and/or could be easily modified to allow cutting of flax straw in an aligned pattern just above the ground surface without any loss of fiber and much faster and cheaper than with a puller. The trick is to use cutters with “shoes” (toboggan like metal plates under the cutter bar to prevent the cutter bar from digging into the soil) like we do here in Saskatchewan to cut lentils which often grow less than six inches above the ground.
What do you think? Is there really fiber in the roots? I will give C$100 to anyone that can send me five flax plants that have spinnable fibers in the roots.
Alvin Ulrich, Biolin Research Inc, 707 Eastlake Ave, Saskatoon, SK, Canada S7N 1A2
cell and text: 306.280.1701 aulrich@biolin.sk.ca