Gossypium is the taxonomic genus of cotton plants, placed in Malvaceae. The genus name denotes a group of related species, while cotton can also refer to their harvested fibres or the resulting material. A taxonomic name and a material name consequently do not identify the same kind of object.[ref]
The fibres make a striking connection between plant diversity and cell mechanics. In the studied cultivated cotton, an individual fibre is an elongated cell growing from the seed coat plant epidermis. A 2001 study followed fluorescent tracer movement into these growing cells and related changing intercellular access to developmental stage.[ref]
The control of single-celled cotton fiber elongation by developmentally reversible gating of plasmodesmata and coordinated expression of sucrose and K+ transporters and expansin by Y. L. Ruan and others. Abstract and Figure1: single-cell fibres and changing tracer access
For an original classification example, a record might identify a specimen's taxonomic genus, measure the length of 100 sampled fibres and record how much material was harvested. Those are three distinct observations. A genus assignment does not fix every fibre's length, and a fibre measurement alone does not identify a species.
Comparisons within Gossypium should therefore keep taxonomic identity, developmental stage and measurement conditions explicit. The common word cotton does not guarantee that two samples have the same ancestry or cellular properties.
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