Here is what this interesting plant grows in my garden - Syrian cottonwood

I bought this very Syrian cotton wool, giving quite decent money. But not because I succumbed to persuasion, but simply decided to grow this plant myself, about which I knew interesting things, but I never saw with my own eyes.

The cotton wool grows quite high - up to 2 meters. And since his leaves look like the leaves of the elastica ficus (this is the one that was grandmother's), it is also called the garden ficus. This means that a decorative plant is already good.

It's just that the willow grows quickly and can occupy a rather large space, so it is better not to plant it on a flower bed.

This plant has a lot of advantages, but those that are manifested in others to a greater extent. However, judge for yourself.

At the end of the 19th century, rubber was found in the wool. There was joy from such a discovery - your rubber in the temperate zone! They even tried to set up production, but there were a lot of costs, and little rubber. The vatnik could not stand the competition with Hevea.

And then they found oil in the seeds - good, high-quality, soap made from it was a high-quality product. However, in ordinary sunflower oil is 5 times more.

And then the cotton wool did not hold out... Quilted seeds with the finest down, softer than cotton.

We thought we could spin. And what? You guessed right: the yarn did not work, this fluff was too brittle - where does he care about cotton! But this thinnest fluff still has a dignity - it does not get wet.

And during the First World War, they began to stuff life jackets. But even here, as they say, the music did not last long. The thick seiba (a relative of the baobab) has more fluff.

In short, this plant was abandoned as hopeless, although initially it showed great promise.

In the wild, or rather, in the official status of a weed, cottonweed grows now in Ukraine, there is a lot of it in the Caucasus - there it is warm and comfortable. And they tried to expel him from the gardens, but then his talent again cut through. True, as always, with a catch.

Dirty - pink, but large and fragrant flowers of the fleece are very popular with bees, because at least fill up with nectar in them. True, due to the special structure of the flower, hardworking insects get stuck in it and die. So the beekeepers were tormented by doubts: is this plant harmful or not? On the one hand, bees die, but on the other, there is a lot of nectar. Someone plucked the fleece at the root, while others, on the contrary, multiplied.

One scientist was not too lazy and calculated that although many bees die, but only a third of them are young bees - workers. So it’s not such a big loss per circle, but the honey yield is very good.

The source of the photos used in the article is Yandex pictures