Cotton comes from a plant that grows soft, white, fluffy clumps called bolls. These bolls look like little clouds or cotton balls growing right on a bush! Before the fluffy part appears, the cotton plant grows pretty flowers that start out white or yellow and then change to pink or red. Cotton plants love warm weather and lots of sunshine, and people have been growing cotton for over 7,000 years, which is even longer than the pyramids have been around!
When the cotton bolls pop open, farmers harvest all that fluffy white fiber. Big machines called cotton gins help separate the soft cotton from the tiny seeds hiding inside. Then the cotton is cleaned and spun into long, strong threads. Those threads are woven together to make the fabric for so many things we use every day, like T-shirts, jeans, soft bed sheets, and even the bandages that go on your scrapes. One single cotton plant can grow enough fiber to make about 200 pairs of jeans over its lifetime, and the United States is one of the biggest cotton-growing countries in the whole world!
