PLANTS IN PROFILE # 27
WILD COTTON ( Gossyplum hirsutum)
The newest addition to the Mound House botanical collection
is a native plant often found on ancient shell middens such as ours here at
Mound House. In the wild, growing amongst the coastal hammocks and thickets,
wild cotton grows as a shrub and can reach heights of 6 to 12 feet living for
several years. The native range of wild cotton includes southern Florida,
Mexico, northern South America , Central America and the West Indies.
People have been cultivating and using cotton for over two thousand years,
spinning the fibers of the cotton bolls into fabric and string. Today, modern
varieties of cotton are the most widely used natural fiber in the world and the
seeds of cotton are used in the production of oils and animal food. In herbal
medicine, cotton seed and roots have been used to treat asthma , dysentery and
cancer and is occasionally planted as an ornamental. Interestingly, in Florida,
a permit is required from the State to grow wild cotton, even though it
is listed as an endangered plant. Oddly, this plant achieved its endangered
status due to extensive eradication efforts in the 1930s which nearly
obliterated wild cotton from the Florida. Wild cotton was eradicated in an
effort to prevent the spread of boll weevils from wild sources into cultivated
crops. Even though there is no cultivated cotton crop within several hundred
miles of the Mound House and our plants, the Florida Department of Agriculture
still requires a permit to grow cotton and monitors the site with insect traps
to detect the potential presence of the boll
weevil.
