FLAX

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30901, 6 November 1965, Page 5

FLAX

(Specially written (or "The

Press” by

ARNOLD WALL.]

CULTIVATED for thousands of years, at first for the fibre only and later also for the seed which has medicinal value, flax is perhaps the most useful to man of all plants except wheat. It was, therefore, well named Linima usitatessima by Linnaeus, “the very much used.”

Its Latin name gives us linen and linseed; its English name, flax, has not proved very useful in any applied sense, there is “flaxen hair’’ and “toad-flax” given to a very different class of plants and that is about all.

Flax, has, of course, a very long and distinguished history being known from almost prehistoric times in Egypt and elsewhere. Pliny wrote of it quite passionately as providing the means of rapid transport by sea, that is. of course, for the sails of ships, just as we might say of coal long ago and of oil and electric power today. There are four species of Linima in England (and Europe generally) and we have one very widely-distributed species, especially abundant on the sea-coast, a pretty flower with white to pale blue flowers. It may be seen on the cliffs round Lyttelton harbour. Neither this or any of the British species has fibre of any value except the flax of commerce.

Flax has been, and I suppose still is, grown in New Zealand for the seeds and not, I think, for the fibre. Now for “New Zealand