"THE ABACA PLANT" Abaca Musa textilis nee is indigenous to the Philippine but has been introduced to Borneo,Indonesia and Central america.it belong to the family ofrom 0f Musascea and is similar to banana in appearance except that the leaves are upright,pointed,narrower and more tapering than the leaves of banana.the color of the Abaca leaves is darker green,and the stem is lighter green than the leaves and stem of the banana plant.abaca matures later,grow slower and is susceptible to prolonged drought.the leaves are so tightly rolled that when these mature and unroll,a pronounced dark line on the under surface of the leaves is etched.this line is more pronounced in abaca than in the banana leaves. its fruit are small,seedy,and inedible.the number of finger in the bunch is very much less and the direction of finger in the hand is more or less perpendicular to the main axis of the bunch,the plant has a prolic suckering ability,growing as much as 12 to 13stalks per hill at maturity.When leafesheet formation is compete,flower buds develop.at this period,the stalk are mature and ready for harvest. The abaca stalk consisting of a central core refered to as the "true stalk"is fleshy and fiberless. the cored is covered by a number of over laping sheath which are tightly laid one upon the other to form a solid mass comonly refered to as the stalk or stem,but in reality it is a false stalk because the sheat composing it are only the extension of the petiole of the leaves.the sheats are thickest at the middle and the base. thickness,however,diminishes toward the lateral sides and toward the top. the outer sheats are crecsent-shaped and do not reach the top of the stalk, the midle sheat are sami circular in shape and of the same length as the stalk and the inner sheat are more or less circular extending to the top of the stalk and originating at variables intervals vat the base of the plan.the number of leafsheat in an abaca plant varies from 6-23 or more,depending on the size and variety of the plant. the outer layer of fibrous ribbon generaly known as tuxy from which the comercial fiber Manila hemps is obtained. the middle layer with raw of cavities seperated by longitudinal walls which have fine fiber of law tenstile strength and the traverse walls with thin,fiberless and transparent membarines.