Linum bienne Linum bienne Linum bienne, the pale flax, is a flowering plant in the genus "Linum", native to the Mediterranean region and western Europe, north to England and Ireland. Pale flax grows as a biennial or perennial plant in dry, sunny calcareous or neutral grasslands from sea level up to 1000 m. It has long, narrow stems to 60 cm tall and slender leaves 1.5-2.5 cm long. The flowers have five petals about 1 cm long and nearly round; they are pale blue but streaked with darker colour. It flowers in late spring and, at least in more temperate regions, through
Flax dry capsule 5–9 mm in diameter, containing several glossy brown seeds shaped like an apple pip, 4–7 mm long. The earliest evidence of humans using wild flax as a textile comes from the present-day Republic of Georgia, where spun, dyed, and knotted wild flax fibers were found in Dzudzuana Cave and dated to the Upper Paleolithic, 30,000 years ago. Flax was first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent region. Evidence exists of a domesticated oilseed flax with increased seed size by 9,000 years ago from Tell Ramad in Syria. Use of the crop steadily spread, reaching as far as Switzerland and