Cotton Plant

I drew the cotton plant at the moment of opening, when the boll splits along its seams and the white fibre breaks out. Before that, the boll is only a green pod on a stem. After it, for a short time before harvest, the plant looks the way everyone imagines it. In this cotton plant print the open boll sits beside the flower it grew from. The cream bloom and the white fibre are the two ends of one story, and they share one sheet.

In shortCotton, Gossypium hirsutum, is a shrubby plant of the mallow family, grown for the fibre that covers its seeds. Each fibre is a single elongated cell. The plate shows the open boll, the seeds and the flower together.

Key Facts

Is a cotton fibre really a single cell?

Yes. Each cotton fibre is one plant cell, a hair that grows out from the surface of the seed. It starts to lengthen at flowering and reaches full length about 25 days after fertilisation, growing fastest in the first ten to fifteen days. A single seed carries roughly 10,000 to 20,000 of these fibres, each only a few centimetres long.

The fibres are alive until the boll opens. Then they dry and twist, and that twist is part of what makes them easy to spin into yarn. Few single cells in the plant kingdom are put to such use. Illustrators have long struggled to draw a mass of fibres without losing the individual strands, and the essay on cotton botanical art follows that challenge through the centuries.

What does a cotton flower look like?

A cotton flower is a large, cup-shaped bloom with five petals, roughly 2.5 to 7.5 cm across. It opens cream to pale yellow and darkens through pink to a deep red as it ages. The petals wither and fall within about three days, so the flower is brief.

The likeness to a hibiscus is easy to see, and it is a true one. Cotton belongs to the mallow family, Malvaceae, which also includes hibiscus and okra. In upland cotton the flowers appear in summer on the fruiting branches, a few at a time. When the petals drop, the work of the flower is done and the green pod behind it takes over.

How does a cotton flower become an open boll?

After the petals fall, the swollen ovary becomes a round green capsule called a boll. It is about 4 to 6 cm across and holds roughly 36 seeds, each wrapped in fibre. Inside, the fibres grow and push out from the seeds while the boll ripens from light green to brown.

Fibres reach full length about 25 days after fertilisation, but the boll takes longer to finish. It opens around 49 to 50 days after flowering, in a wider range of 45 to 65 days depending on the weather. The dry boll then splits along its seams, and the fibre expands outward in a white mass. From planting to open boll, the whole cycle runs for roughly 130 days.

Where does cotton come from?

Cotton comes from the genus Gossypium, a group of about fifty species in the mallow family. Four of them were domesticated for fibre, and they were domesticated separately: two in the Old World, and two, Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense, in the Americas. Cotton has been grown and woven for thousands of years.

Gossypium hirsutum, called upland cotton, is native to the Americas and is now the most widely grown cotton in the world, supplying most of its fibre. Its cultivation also carries a cost in water, land and chemicals. The essay on cotton’s environmental impact sets that out in full.

What is cotton used for besides cloth?

Cotton is used for much more than cloth. Each seed is wrapped in long lint fibres, which are spun into yarn, and in shorter fuzz fibres, which go into paper and other products. The seed itself yields cottonseed oil, used in cooking products and margarine.

The cloth is still the main product. Cotton fabric breathes, absorbs moisture and washes well, and the fibre is natural and biodegradable. That long partnership with people is the reason the plant is so widely grown. It is also why a cotton plate suits a textile designer’s wall as well as a botanist’s.

Drawing the cotton plant

The plate shows an open boll with the white fibre breaking from its seams, drawn beside the cream flower with its pink centre. Seeds and a flower bud sit alongside them. Together they give the plant’s before and after: the short-lived bloom, and the fibre that follows weeks later, when the petals have long fallen and the green pod has ripened and split.

The white of the fibre against the dark green of the leaves and the pale flower makes a palette that is striking and restrained. A photograph of a cotton field gives the white but rarely the flower, and almost never both at once. The hand-drawn digital illustration puts them on one sheet and keeps the seeds and fibre separate enough to read.

Where does a cotton plant print work on a wall?

The cotton plate suits a study, a living room, a bedroom, or a textile-themed or farmhouse interior. In a white or pale wood frame it looks clean and contemporary. In a dark frame the contrast deepens. It belongs to the Workspace Green collection, planned for calm, structural plants in working spaces, and the full range of botanical prints shows what hangs well beside it. In the photograph below, the cotton plate hangs with fig and beetle prints by a minimalist desk.

Fine-art print →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is cotton a shrub or a crop plant?

Both. Upland cotton is a multi-stemmed subshrub, usually about 1.5 m tall, that is perennial in the wild or in frost-free places. In farming it is usually grown as an annual and harvested after the bolls open.

What is upland cotton?

Upland cotton is the common name of Gossypium hirsutum, also called Mexican cotton. It is native to the Americas and supplies most of the world’s cotton fibre. Other species, such as Gossypium barbadense, are grown for longer, finer fibre in smaller quantities.

How long does cotton take to grow?

About two months after planting, flower buds appear. The flowers open roughly three weeks later, and the boll opens around 50 days after that. That is a little over four months from planting to an open boll, depending on the weather and the variety.

How many seeds are in a cotton boll?

A cotton boll holds roughly 36 seeds, each surrounded by fibre. The number depends on how many sections, called locks, the boll has, usually four or five. Stress during the weeks around flowering can reduce the count.

How is this print made, and how does it reach me?

There are two formats. The digital download is a high-resolution file that you print yourself, at home or at a print shop; no physical item is shipped. The fine-art print is printed to order on archival paper or canvas, framed or unframed, in sizes from small prints to over 150 cm (60 inches), and delivered to your door.