September 15: Cotton

Cotton is ripening now, over in the east in the plantations. The zoo has a little demonstration plot of the state's main four agri crops: rice, soybeans, sorghum and cotton. (In the western part of the state, beef cattle, chickens and lumber are the main agri industries.) It's interesting to be able to see them developing up close, instead of from a car window on the highway. Cotton starts with a frilly bud, then a lovely pale yellow blossom, then a fat, hard green boll develops and finally splits open to reveal the cotton. It really feels the same as what you get in a bag of cotton balls (if they're not synthetic) except it's full of little dark brown seeds. If you leave the cotton on the plant, by January the plants will be brown and brittle, but the cotton will still be there.





When I was very young, my family lived in a residential neighborhood on the edge of a city not too far from this one. The end of the street jutted right up against a cotton field. One night after the cotton had been harvested, my parents were away and my babysitter took me out into the field and we gathered cotton that had been left behind by the harvesters. I was astonished that we could gather something pretty and useful like that right from the ground, outdoors. That may have been my introduction to the origin of natural products.