FLAX IN JAPAN.

Waipa Post, Volume XXI, Issue 1200, 2 February 1922, Page 7

FLAX IN JAPAN.

PHOIOIIUM THRIVES BUT IS STERILE.

CULTURE WORLD WIDE,

The New Zealand flax plant, which is indigenous only to this country and Norfolk Island, is now growing well in Japan from some seeds sent to that country nearly four years* ago by Mr J. W. Poynton, S.M., at Auckland, who is an ardent botanist. A letter received by Mr Poynton from a Japanese in Toyohashi Cfty, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, states that the seeds sent by Mr Poynton in May, 1918, were planted by the Department of Agriculture and Commerce in the colonies of Chosen and Formosa, but did not grow well. The plant, however, flourished in Japan, and grew to sft or 6ft in height without special attention, Strangely enough, however, /the flax plant bears no seeds in Japan, and the only way of multiplying it is to divide the roots. The writer asks for two pints of flax seeds, and encloses! a specimen of its fibre and a sheet of good white paper made from the fibres. Mr Poynton says that the rea son that the flax will not grow well in the colonies of Japan wasi that there were no honey-eating birds and insects to collect flax honey and so distribute the pollen as the tui did in our bush. The flax, by reason of its comme/rdial value )and adaptability, was being planted and grown in various places* throughout the world, and its fame was spreading. In the Orkney Islands it has seeded well, and it was now flourishing in the Isle of Skye, while at St. Helena, in the tropics. the people were growing it for export and commercial purposes. Its adaptability was shown by the fact that it grew in sand and dry gravel on the west coast of New Zealand, and at the snowline of the hills near Lake Wanaka, Although it was not an annual, it grew abundantly, and by a process of selection it might bs made to bear every two or three years instead of five. The flax plant produced 35 tons 'of green leaf, yielding over four tons of fibre, to the acre, whereas the annual jute plant of India produced a quarter-ton of fibre to the acre ; the banana plant, from which Manila was obtained, yielded 18 tons of leaf to one of fibre, and the Mexican sisal plant 25 tons to one ton of fibre.