Lyn, I don't think the starvation in Belgium would have had anything to do with it. If the relevant cultivars' extinction was caused by WWI in Flanders, it would have been because of the abandonment of growing flax in the middle of the turmoil of the war, combined with the destruction of the habitat by the incredible shelling and laying waste to the land during the trench warfare. (Look at photos of Flanders at this time, and it's in the writings too: the landscape is a sea of mud, perhaps with a single dead tree still standing. The amount of the countryside destroyed was incredible.)
If it helps to think in terms of animals for a minute, consider that many types of highly domesticated animals cannot survive in the wild on their own. The domesticated breeds are usually at most subspecies, perhaps only strains, of the species in question--we're not talking about the species going extinct. If all the individuals of such a dependent breed were abandoned, however, perhaps because they were no longer commercially viable, that breed would go extinct. Now apply the same scenario to flax. The strains, or cultivars, from which the finest thread could be made, might have been abandoned, whether because of the turmoil of war and habitat destruction (WWI), deliberate enforcement and extermination (French Revolution), or loss of economic incentive due to inefficiencies in manufacture (Alex's hypothesis). And because they couldn't maintain themselves without human cultivation, those particular, less hardy, strains (cultivars) went extinct. Now does that particular hypothesis about WWI make better sense? HTH, Nancy Connecticut, USA On Fri, Aug 31, 2018 at 2:35 AM, <lynrbai...@supernet.com> wrote: > "...The idea that the fine thread plants died out, I heard in WWI when > Belgium was starved makes no sense to me..." - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
