There are so many things made of cotton that it would be hard to go through a day without using or wearing cotton cloth. You probably sleep between cotton sheets and wash your face with a cotton washcloth. Your shirts, jeans, socks, and even your shoestrings are often made of cotton.
Cotton grows best where it stays warm and sunny for at least half the year. Large amounts of cotton are grown in the southern United States, the southern part of the former Soviet Union, and in India. Farmers plant cottonseeds in the spring. When a cotton plant is about two months old, it begins to bloom.
Each flower on a cotton plant is creamy white at first. Then the flower turns pink, and finally red. After three days, it dies, and the dry blown flower is pushed out on the tip of new, green cotton boll. A cotton boll is a seedpod. Over several months, it grows to about the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Inside the boll, moist cotton fibers are forming around the cottonseeds.
By early fall the cotton plants are four feet tall. Most of the bolls have turned brown and popped open to show their cotton. The cotton fibers begin to dry and fluff out.
Now it's time for the farmers to pick cotton. Giant picking machines run from sunrise until after dark. Clouds of cotton lint float around the pickers. The air is filled with the rich smell of freshly picked cotton.
Farmers haul trailers loaded with picked cotton to a gin. A cotton gin is a huge, noisy machine that pulls the cotton fibers away from the seeds. Other machines clean and dry the cotton. The clean cotton is bundled in five-hundred-pound bales. The baled cotton is sent to mills to be made into cloth.
More things are made of cotton than any other fiber. One reason is because it costs less to harvest cotton fibers than most other fibers used to make cloth. Another reason is because cotton has many desirable features.
Cotton fibers suck up moisture easily and dry quickly. Cotton fibers are soft and lightweight. Each inch-long fiber has a couple hundred twists in it. The twists help make cotton stretchy. All of these qualities make cotton cloth feel light, cool, and comfortable.
Text copyright © 1995 Patricia A. Keeler and Francis X. McCall, Jr.
A. convince the reader to buy cotton products.
B. describe the beauty of the cotton plant and its blossoms.
C. describe the cotton picker and cotton gin.
D. tell the reader how cotton is grown and harvested.
A. boll.
B. plant.
C. months.
D. bloom.
A. bolls.
B. pink flowers.
C. stem of the plants.
D. cottonseeds.
A. turns pink.
B. dries and fluffs out.
C. forms a boll.
D. falls off the plant.
A. fall.
B. winter.
C. spring.
D. summer.
A. illustrate how cotton is planted.
B. display the beauty of the cotton plant.
C. show the stages of growth of cotton.
D. demostrate how cotton is picked.
A. It rinses the cotton clean.
B. It picks the cotton.
C. It separates fibers from seeds.
D. It bales the cotton.
A. expensive.
B. warm.
C. stretchy.
D. scratchy.