Kenaf

A fast-growing fiber plant (Hibiscus cannabinus) related to cotton and okra, believed native to Africa and cultivated there and in South Asia for centuries for the strong bast fiber stripped from its stalks, traditionally used for cordage, sacking and coarse textiles. India and China are the leading modern producers, and the crop has drawn periodic industrial interest, including a mid-twentieth-century United States government research effort to develop kenaf as a domestic pulp source for paper, an alternative fiber crop that grows far faster than the trees conventionally used for pulpwood. Kenaf fiber today is used in specialty paper, rope, textiles and, increasingly, as a natural-fiber reinforcement in composite materials.