Abaca

I used to enjoy teaching myself a new word every day, but in recent years I became bored with the concept. It seemed irrelevant to learn these words which had no practical application to daily (or even yearly) interactions. And after not using these words, I would forget them quickly, rendering them totally useless.

But lately I've started to think of new ways in which I could make new words relevant, and practical even - to make them have some meaning in life. I want to make these words fresh again, and give them a new coat of paint. And I was thinking that perhaps the best way to make these words relevant would be to put them in some sort of context that I could relate to. And perhaps in making these words relate to me, I could make them relate to you, too.

So here goes, with Word #1: Abaca.

According to an old copy of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, (copyright 1975) abaca is a noun meaning "a fiber obtained from the leafstalk of a banana (Musa textilis) native to the Philippines - called also Manila hemp."

I'm thinking about fibers that are obtained from plants, such as cotton and linen. At what point in time did people start crafting plant fibers into textiles? Originally I'm assuming that plants were taken in their whole form and rakishly draped and wrapped around people when a chill was in the air. Along the way people must have observed the stringy qualities of certain plants and stems and decided to somehow create a more custom-sized, weaved textile. (I've just looked up leafstalk, which is otherwise known as 'petiole', a slender stem that supports the blade of a foilage leaf.) So apparently abaca utilizes the stem, an oft-underutilized part of the plant.

So, assuming that you have no familiarity with abaca, why should it be relevant to you? You may be perfectly content utilizing your current textile repertoire: perhaps a menagerie of cotton, acrylic, silk, wool, microfiber, etc. Abaca may not have a place in any of this. But if we think about it, in an eco-conscious world, perhaps abaca should have a place in our materials list. Isn't it best to have a variety of plants growing in the ground, to provide the soil with a variety of nutrients, and to not deplete the soil of one nutrient in particular?

Although the dictionary entry made abaca sound like it's actually a part of the banana plant, I found a website more accurately depicts it as being a member of the banana family of plants. So please do not be led astray: abaca does not seem to be connected to the long yellow fruit that you may enjoy in your cereal. Abaca is a separate entity.

I am surprised to learn on this website that the textile of the abaca plant is used in different parts of the world for such varying paper products as tea bags and medical goods. Abaca is one of a multitude of natural resources that humans have wrought their alchemy upon, differentiating into multiple incarnations. Abaca is then one of many plants that have found a way to not only survive, but to reproduce, through the handiwork of humans, who use the plant for their own means and make many more of it than would probably otherwise exist.