Your clothes might be made of plant cells! Bast fibers are super long, strong cells that people have spun into thread for thousands of years.
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Phloem fibers, also called bast fibers, grow in the outer part of a stem, near the sugar pipes (the phloem).
Many bast fibers die when they are finished growing, but their tough walls stay.
Some flax fiber cells can be a few centimeters long. That is gigantic for a single cell!
Bast fibers help a stem stay strong and bendy, so it doesn't snap in the wind.
People use them too! The flax plant gives us fibers for linen cloth. Jute fibers make burlap sacks, and hemp fibers can make rope.
Press Pull test on the 3D model. Then, with a grown-up, look at a piece of string or twine up close. Can you see the thin strands twisted together?
By MonreaghCentre. A fun video for kids.
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