From the ashes of the Old Victorian parlour-room: an unconventional natual fibre, of "keep the aspidistra flying" again

CONCLUSIONS The final considerations could be the following. The aspidistra fibres could be more advantageous than hemp fibres as reinforcing poly-propylene polymers, both atactic or isotactic. In fact practically the same tensile strength is obtained in composites with both short or long fibres from aspidistra or hemp, but aspidistra fibres are lighter than poly-propylene, so PP composites containing aspidistra fibres are lighter than PP alone and hemp-composite too. Nevertheless much remains to be done to make these ‘funny’ fibres a commercial product: surely aspidistra plants are not now grown in farms! The first step could be a research and development effort encompassing workers in many disciplines: botanists and geneticists, agronomists and chemists, engineers, economists and others. Naturally in addition there is the problem of gaining the interest of organizations that have the imagination and the capital to exploit a strange new product to the fullest extent. Unfortunately such an organization surely wants financial backing through short time; it is therefore likely that similar new ‘plants’ will become commercial only if government and private organization cooperate to develop them... a very difficult event, above all in our country!