page_title: Ground tissue
section_title: Fibres
hierarchical_section_title: Ground tissue / Sclerenchyma / Fibres
caption_attribution_description: English: Carl Szczerski, prep slide, no internet locations, taken for a laboratory tutorial
context_page_description: The ground tissue of plants includes all tissues that are neither dermal nor vascular. It can be divided into three types based on the nature of the cell walls.
  Parenchyma cells have thin primary walls and usually remain alive after they become mature. Parenchyma forms the "filler" tissue in the soft parts of plants, and is usually present in cortex, pericycle, pith, and medullary rays in primary stem and root.
  Collenchyma cells have thin primary walls with some areas of secondary thickening. Collenchyma provides extra mechanical and structural support, particularly in regions of new growth.
  Sclerenchyma cells have thick lignified secondary walls and often die when mature. Sclerenchyma provides the main structural support to a plant.
context_section_description: Fibers or bast are generally long, slender, so-called prosenchymatous cells, usually occurring in strands or bundles. Such bundles or the totality of a stem's bundles are colloquially called fibers. Their high load-bearing capacity and the ease with which they can be processed has since antiquity made them the source material for a number of things, like ropes, fabrics and mattresses. The fibers of flax (Linum usitatissimum) have been known in Europe and Egypt for more than 3,000 years, those of hemp (Cannabis sativa) in China for just as long. These fibers, and those of jute (Corchorus capsularis) and ramie (Boehmeria nivea, a nettle), are extremely soft and elastic and are especially well suited for the processing to textiles. Their principal cell wall material is cellulose.
  Contrasting are hard fibers that are mostly found in monocots. Typical examples are the fiber of many grasses, Agave sisalana (sisal), Yucca or Phormium tenax, Musa textilis and others. Their cell walls contain, besides cellulose, a high proportion of lignin. The load-bearing capacity of Phormium tenax is as high as 20–25 kg/mm², the same as that of good steel wire (25 kg/ mm²), but the fibre tears as soon as too great a strain is placed upon it, while the wire distorts and does not tear before a strain of 80 kg/mm². The thickening of a cell wall has been studied in Linum. Starting at the centre of the fiber, the thickening layers of the secondary wall are deposited one after the other. Growth at both tips of the cell leads to simultaneous elongation. During development the layers of secondary material seem like tubes, of which the outer one is always longer and older than the next. After completion of growth, the missing parts are supplemented, so that the wall is evenly thickened up to the tips of the fibers.
  Fibers usually originate from meristematic tissues. Cambium and procambium are their main centers of production. They are usually associated with the xylem and phloem of the vascular bundles. The fibers of the xylem are always lignified, while those of the phloem are cellulosic. Reliable evidence for the fibre cells' evolutionary origin from tracheids exists. During evolution the strength of the tracheid cell walls was enhanced, the ability to conduct water was lost and the size of the pits was reduced. Fibers that do not belong to the xylem are bast (outside the ring of cambium) and such fibers that are arranged in characteristic patterns at different sites of the shoot.
  The term "sclerenchyma" (originally Sclerenchyma) was introduced by Mettenius in 1865.
caption: Cross section of sclerenchyma fibers
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