Flax (Linum usitatissimum) is one of the oldest crops people have grown, and one of the few that gives us both a textile and a food. Its fibre becomes linen. Its seeds, called linseed in Britain, are pressed for oil. The story of how it ended up as a bottle of cold-pressed seed oil starts a very long way back.
Fibres from a Georgian cave
In 2009 Eliso Kvavadze and colleagues reported wild flax fibres from Dzudzuana Cave in the Caucasus foothills of Georgia. The fibres turned up while the researchers were analysing pollen in clay samples from the cave, and the layers that held them date from about 36,000 to 24,000 years ago; the paper's headline figure is 30,000 years. Under the microscope some fibres were twisted, showing they had been spun; one string was knotted; and the team interpreted some fibres as dyed black, grey or turquoise.
What they made is still debated. The authors suggest cords, baskets or garments. Textile historian Elizabeth Barber, commenting at the time, doubted they were clothing and pointed to string for carrying, nets and snares. Either way, people were working flax long before anyone planted a field.
From wild plant to crop
Farming came later. A 2021 genetic study of fibre flax notes that it is commonly believed oilseed flax was first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent in Neolithic times. Enlarged seeds, which can be a sign of early cultivation, have been found at Tell Ramad in Syria and are dated to around 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. The wild parent is thought to be pale flax, Linum bienne.
The same paper says the first flax in southern Europe's Danube valley was a winter oil crop, and that fibre varieties were spreading by about 4,000 BC, with flax textiles reaching the Nile Valley and as far as Britain. Later, Russian farmers developed fibre landraces known as kryazhs through centuries of mass selection that favoured tall plants, and these were traded and used in breeding programmes in many countries. That is still the basic split in the species: tall plants for fibre, shorter ones for seed.
Linen
Britannica records that fine linen has been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, and that flax remains turn up at prehistoric lake dwellings in Switzerland. The stalks are fermented in a process called retting, then dried, crushed and beaten to get at the fibre.
What the plant looks like
Flax is a hairless annual, up to about 75cm tall, with slender stems and spear-shaped leaves. Below ground it sends down a taproot that can reach about a metre in good conditions. The flowers are usually blue, with five petals, and they are short-lived: the petals fall by early afternoon. Flowering goes on for around 20 to 25 days, and the plant is self-pollinating, so each blue flower is replaced by a seed capsule, or boll. A full boll can hold ten seeds, though six is more typical. Growers harvest when about 90% of the bolls have turned brown.
The seeds come in two colours, brown and yellow (often sold as golden). Yellow-seeded types have thinner coats and are more susceptible to seed decay and damage, according to North Dakota State University. A single seed weighs only about 8mg, so a tablespoon holds on the order of a thousand.
Flax or linseed?
They are the same species. The AHDB, which advises British farmers, describes linseed as the short form grown for oil and flax as the tall form, rarely grown for fibre. Spring-sown linseed is the traditional crop, with winter-sown types a newer development. In the UK most of the seed is used in animal feed, with food-grade seed grown on specialist contracts, and harvest usually begins from mid-July.
From seed to oil
Crushing the seed yields linseed oil and linseed meal. A seed is a compact parcel of fat: our brown flax seeds are 42.2g fat per 100g, so a little over two-fifths of their weight, and in the oil that fat is concentrated to 99g per 100g, with about half of it (50g) alpha-linolenic acid. Our Cold Pressed Organic Flax Seed Oil is 100% organic, with a nutty, earthy flavour. It is food-grade, made from organic flax seed.
In the kitchen
Oils high in omega-3 are quick to go rancid, so treat it with care. Keep the bottle in the fridge once opened, away from light, and use it within 3 months. Use it cold: drizzle it on salads, vegetables and dips, or blend it into smoothies. Our product page has more.
Sources
- Kvavadze et al. (2009), 30,000 years old wild flax fibers, Science (author copy)
- NPR: These vintage threads are 30,000 years old
- Duk et al. (2021), The genetic landscape of fiber flax, Frontiers in Plant Science
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Flax
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Linen
- NDSU Extension: Flax production in North Dakota
- AHDB: Distribution and biology of volunteer linseed weeds in the UK
- CPM Magazine: Fields of sapphire (UK linseed)
