The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Gossypium barbadense
Also called Sea Island Cotton, American Pima Cotton, American Egyptian Cotton, Brazilian Cotton, Egyptian Cotton, Gallini Cotton, Peruvian Cotton
Gossypium barbadense is a long-staple cotton species prized for its long, silky fibers, often called Sea Island, Pima or Egyptian cotton. It grows as a frost-sensitive tropical shrub or small tree, usually grown as an annual crop, and needs warm, dry conditions with irrigation.
Gossypium barbadense is one of several species of cotton. It is in the mallow family. It has been cultivated since antiquity, but has been especially prized since a form with particularly long fibers was developed in the 19th century. Other names associated with this species include Sea Island, Egyptian, Pima, and extra-long staple (ELS) cotton.
The species is a tropical, frost-sensitive perennial that produces yellow flowers and has black seeds. It grows as a bush or small tree and yields cotton with unusually long, silky fibers.
The species accounts for about 5% of the world's cotton production.
Certain regions specialize in G. barbadense. One reason is to prevent different species of cotton from hybridizing with each other. If a field of G. barbadense is too close to a field of a different species, the result is generally poor quality of the fiber.
G. barbadense grows in dry portions of the tropics, where it is a perennial. Treated as an annual, and with the benefit of irrigation, it can be cultivated quite successfully in arid subtropical regions.
Most G. barbadense production comes from cultivars that produce particularly long fiber, and most of that is made into clothing. Fine (thin) yarn requires long fiber. In turn, this thin yarn is required for intermediate products like lace and high thread-count cloth. The long-fiber cultivars also tend to have particularly strong fibers, making them useful for various industrial products. Historically, G. barbadense has been used for the cords of automobile tires and cloth for aircraft wings. It is also used for sewing machine thread.
African Wild Cotton · Tree cotton · Levant cotton · Upland cotton · Hawai'ian cotton · Cotton
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gossypium barbadense by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
