Sisal is a species of flowering plant native to southern Mexico, but widely cultivated and naturalized in many other countries. It yields a stiff fibre used in making rope and various other products. The sisal fibre is traditionally used for rope and twine, and has many other uses, including paper, cloth, footwear, hats, bags, carpets, geotextiles, and dartboards. It is also used as fibre reinforcements for composite fibreglass, rubber, and concrete products. It can also be fermented and distilled to make mezcal.
A braid is a complex structure or pattern formed by interlacing three or more strands of flexible material such as textile yarns, wire, or hair.
A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly constructed cord, string, and twine.
Cordyline australis, commonly known as the cabbage tree, is a widely branched monocot tree endemic to New Zealand.
Dracaena is a genus of about 120 species of trees and succulent shrubs. The formerly accepted genera Pleomele and Sansevieria are now included in Dracaena. In the APG IV classification system, it is placed in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Nolinoideae. It has also formerly been separated into the family Dracaenaceae or placed in the Agavaceae.
Hyphaene thebaica, with common names doum palm and gingerbread tree, is a type of palm tree with edible oval fruit. It is a native to the Arabian Peninsula and also to the northern half and western part of Africa where it is widely distributed and tends to grow in places where groundwater is present.
Kingia is a genus consisting of a single species, Kingia australis, and belongs to the plant family Dasypogonaceae. The Aboriginal name bullanock is used as a common name for the plant. It has a thick pseudo-trunk consisting of accumulated leaf-bases, with a cluster of long, slender leaves on top. The trunk is usually unbranched, but can branch if the growing tip is damaged. Flowers occur in egg-shaped clusters on the ends of up to 100 long curved stems. Kingia grows extremely slowly, the trunk increasing in height by about 1½ centimetres per year. It can live for centuries, however, so can attain a substantial height; 400-year-old plants with a height of six metres are not unusual.
The eye splice is a method of creating a permanent loop in the end of a rope by means of rope splicing.
The Arabian woodpecker or Sarat woodpecker, is a bird species of the family Picidae, native to the Sarawat Mountains of Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It is the only woodpecker that breeds on the Arabian Peninsula.
Dracaena hanningtonii, synonym Sansevieria ehrenbergii, is a flowering plant which grows in northeastern and eastern tropical Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It occurs notably in proliferation along the Olduvai Gorge in northern Tanzania
Maytenus dhofarensis is a species of plant in the family Celastraceae and is found in Oman and Yemen. It is an intricately branched spiny shrub or small tree with its leaves arranged alternately or clustered on short shoots. The flowers have white or cream petals and the fruit are purple or red. It is threatened by habitat loss.
Fique is a natural fibre that grows in the leaves of plants in the genus Furcraea. Common names include fique, cabuya, pita, penca, penco, maguey, cabui, chuchao and coquiza.
Dracaena cinnabari, the Socotra dragon tree or dragon blood tree, is a dragon tree native to the Socotra archipelago, part of Yemen, located in the Arabian Sea. It is named after the blood-like color of the red sap that the trees produce. It is considered the national tree of Yemen.
Vachellia flava, synonym Acacia ehrenbergiana, is a species of drought-resistant bush or small tree, commonly known as salam in Arabic. It is found in the Sahara, the northern Sahel, parts of East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Iran.
Commiphora kua, sometimes known as Abyssinian myrrh or the Yemen myrrh, is a plant native to northeast Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, including Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Zambia, Malawi, Oman and Yemen. It was first described as Balsamodendrum kua in 1847, and has many botanical synonyms. It can be recognised by its simple, serrate leaves and by the pseudo aril, covering the seed, which has four almost linear arm-like lobes.
Ficus vasta is a fig plant found in Ethiopia and Yemen. The tree is a species of sycamore-fig.
Doubling is a textile industry term synonymous with combining. It can be used for various processes during spinning. During the carding stage, several sources of roving are doubled together and drawn, to remove variations in thickness. After spinning, yarn is doubled for many reasons. Yarn may be doubled to produce warp for weaving, to make cotton for lace, crochet and knitting. It is used for embroidery threads and sewing threads, for example: sewing thread is usually 6-cable thread. Two threads of spun 60s cotton are twisted together, and three of these double threads are twisted into a cable, of what is now 5s yarn. This is mercerised, gassed and wound onto a bobbin.
String is a long flexible structure made from fibers twisted together into a single strand, or from multiple such strands which are in turn twisted together. String is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects. It is also used as a material to make things, such as textiles, and in arts and crafts. String is a simple tool, and its use by humans is known to have been developed tens of thousands of years ago. In Mesoamerica, for example, string was invented some 20,000 to 30,000 years ago, and was made by twisting plant fibers together. String may also be a component in other tools, and in devices as diverse as weapons, musical instruments, and toys.
Sterculia africana or African star-chestnut is a deciduous tree, belonging to the genus Sterculia and the family Malvaceae. The species is sometimes called the "mopopaja tree". It is distributed throughout Northeast Africa to Arabia.
Dracaena tamaranae, or drago de Gran Canaria, is a species of endemic plants of the island of Gran Canaria, related to the dragon tree, Dracaena draco, and other species of Dracaena from East Africa. Since 1972, specimens of dragon tree have been identified in Gran Canaria with certain peculiarities. These were initially identified as specimens of Dracaena draco. However, a more detailed study and its cultivation allowed us to recognize that it was a different species. It was first described in 1998 by F. Marrero, A. Almeida, RS & Gonzalez-Martín.
