Ramie

Overview

Production: about 100,000 tonnes (world ramie fiber production, 2018). [2]

Bast fiber from Boehmeria nivea, a perennial plant also called China grass.

Feel and behavior

Lustrous and relatively crisp, often blended for handling and drape.

Where you find it

Summer shirts, woven textiles and blends.

Source and geography

Ramie is the bast fiber of Boehmeria nivea, a perennial plant long known in trade as China grass, whose fiber lies in the stem bark. Ramie has been used for several millennia, and population genomic studies now detect domestication, improvement and feralization signatures in cultivated and wild forms. It is a niche fiber: a 2026 review puts 2018 output at about 100,000 tonnes, against about 310,000 tonnes of flax, although its production value exceeded that of hemp or flax. Much current breeding research comes from Chinese institutes, including the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences' Institute of Bast Fiber Crops.

Worth knowing

• Garments of more than 50% ramie entered the United States without quota limits until legislation in 1986 ended ramie's quota-free status.
• Ramie can be harvested several times a year from the same perennial rootstock.

Types, grades and fabrics

Types and grades

Two botanical forms are grown: white ramie (Boehmeria nivea var. nivea), the China grass of temperate East Asia with silvery leaf undersides, and green ramie (var. tenacissima), adapted to the humid tropics. After decortication the raw ribbons are sold as china grass or decorticated ramie, and after degumming as clean fiber ready for spinning. Degummed fiber is combed into long top for fine, lustrous worsted-type yarns, while the short noil goes into coarser yarns or is cottonized for blending. Yarn quality is judged by fineness, the thoroughness of degumming, whiteness and hairiness. Traditional handwoven ramie cloths include Japan's Ojiya-chijimi and Echigo-jofu and Korea's Hansan mosi.

Fabrics and products

Pure ramie is woven into crisp, lustrous plain weaves for summer shirts, dresses, table linen and traditional East Asian garments, where fine ramie gauze was valued for hot, humid summers. Blends are more common in Western retail: ramie and cotton knits for sweaters and T-shirts, ramie and linen shirting, and ramie with viscose or silk for drapier cloth. Ramie is also used in canvas, upholstery, fishing lines and nets, industrial sewing thread, and papers where high strength and wet resistance are needed. Its stiffness makes it useful in blends that must hold shape, such as structured jackets.

Buying and care

How to judge quality

Good ramie fabric is smooth, bright and even, without a prickly surface of protruding fiber ends, which indicates coarse or poorly degummed fiber. Rub it against the inside of your wrist to check. High luster and whiteness in undyed cloth reflect thorough degumming and bleaching. Check the content line, because ramie blends are often marketed as linen-look and ramie may not be called linen. In knits, ramie adds crispness but can lose shape and stretch at elbows if the ramie share is high. Heavier, tighter weaves resist the fiber's tendency to break at sharp creases better than loosely woven gauze.

Care in detail

Wash ramie at 30 to 40 C with a mild detergent on a gentle cycle, and dry ramie and cotton sweaters flat so they do not stretch. Avoid wringing and heavy spinning, which set sharp creases that can crack the stiff fiber over time. Line dry woven pieces and remove them while slightly damp. Pure ramie takes a hot iron, about 200 C, best with steam while damp, much like linen; reduce the heat for blends. Avoid chlorine bleach on colors. Store garments hung or loosely rolled rather than folded tightly along the same lines, and keep them dry to prevent mildew.

Care at a glance

Follow the label and reshape when damp. Blends and finishes determine suitable ironing and washing.

Environmental and social footprint

Ramie is a perennial that can be cut several times a year from the same roots, which reduces tillage, but its main environmental issue is degumming. Removing roughly a quarter to a third of the ribbon's mass as gums conventionally means boiling in alkali, then bleaching and washing, producing strong effluent that needs treatment; enzymatic and microbial degumming aims to cut those loads but is not yet the norm. Independent, dated life cycle assessments of ramie fabric are scarce, so claims of a low footprint should be treated with caution. China is the main producer and processor, which concentrates both expertise and supply-chain risk. Degummed ramie is nearly pure cellulose and biodegradable if not coated.

Tradeoffs

Separating and degumming the fiber is important to textile performance and processing impact.

A useful question to ask: How was the fiber degummed, and what other fibers are in the fabric?

Science

Data sheet

Cellulose-rich plant material

Seed, stem, leaf or other plant structure. Extraction and preparation vary.

Structure and chemistry

Once degummed, ramie is nearly pure cellulose, and its single fiber cells are exceptionally long, reported at about 20 to 250 mm, so it can be spun as individual cells rather than as bundles. Cellulose microfibrils lie very close to the fiber axis, with a microfibril angle of about 3 to 7.5 degrees, which gives high stiffness and dimensional stability but low extension, about 2.5% at break. Raw bast is heavily gummed: sun-dried fibers contain about 28.5% non-cellulosic matter, including about 14.7% hemicellulose, 5.1% pectin, 1.3% waxes and only about 1% lignin. The pectin is mainly low-esterified homogalacturonan with less branched rhamnogalacturonan I, in a ratio of about 1.7 to 1.

From source to yarn

Stems are harvested and the bark is decorticated into ribbons that still carry most of their gums. Unlike jute and some other bast crops, ramie's pectin is difficult to remove effectively by natural retting, although it can be hydrolyzed by dilute acid or alkali, so ribbons are chemically degummed, typically by boiling in alkaline solutions, then washed and dried. Enzymatic degumming with pectate lyases from actinomycetes and other microbes has been studied since the 1990s; one crude enzyme preparation reduced residual gum to about 14.7% in 24 hours, and enzyme cocktails tailored to ramie pectin structure are being developed. The degummed fiber is then prepared for spinning, often in blends.

Performance in use

Ramie is strong, stiff and lustrous and absorbs and releases moisture readily. The low microfibril angle that gives it strength also makes it inextensible, so fabrics wrinkle readily and feel crisp. Insufficiently degummed or untreated ramie yarns carry stiff protruding fiber ends that cause a pricking sensation on skin; cellulase or pectinase treatments soften the fiber and reduce this hairiness. It dyes with cellulose dye classes and chars rather than melts, and alkali treatment is used to modify ramie fabric for composites. Laboratory studies report bacteriostatic behavior of ramie fiber, but such findings apply to the tested material, not to every fabric.

How it is identified

Burn tests are indicative only; ramie burns like other cellulose fibers, with a paper-like smell and soft ash. Microscopy shows long, thick-walled cells with a lumen, and the length of isolated cells, which can far exceed the roughly 17 to 25 mm of flax elementary fibers, is a useful clue. Its very low lignin distinguishes it from jute in staining tests. FTIR confirms cellulose but does not separate ramie from flax or hemp. Ramie blends are sometimes sold as linen-look fabrics, so the fiber content line matters.

History

Timeline

1. 1986US legislation ended the quota-free status that had let garments of more than 50% ramie enter the United States outside textile import quotas. [3]
2. 2000Researchers reported enzymatic degumming of ramie bast fibers as an alternative to hot alkali treatment. [4]
3. 2016A study evaluated braided ramie fiber as a surgical suture biomaterial. [5]
4. 2018World ramie output was about 100,000 tonnes, below flax at about 310,000 tonnes, though ramie production value was higher than hemp or flax. [2]
5. 2023Structural analysis of ramie pectin was used to design a tailored enzyme cocktail for more efficient degumming. [6]

Ramie has a long association with East Asian plant-fiber textiles and is also known as China grass. Its strength and luster encouraged textile use, while removing natural gums remained an important processing step.

The deeper record

Ramie belongs to the long East Asian tradition of bast-fiber cloth and has been cultivated for several millennia. Its modern history has been shaped by degumming: the fiber is strong and fine, but its gums resist retting and require chemical or enzymatic removal, which is costly and raises environmental concerns. From the 1990s researchers developed microbial pectinolytic enzymes to replace hot alkali, and in the past decade sequencing, genetic mapping and transformation work have aimed to breed varieties with lower pectin and hemicellulose. Newer research also tests ramie in biodegradable composites and even as a braided surgical suture.

Labeling and law

Ramie is labeled by its fiber name and percentage by weight under the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act (15 U.S.C. 70 et seq.) and 16 CFR Part 303 in the United States, and under Regulation (EU) No 1007/2011 in the EU. China grass is a common name, not a separate fiber, and ramie may not be described as linen or flax. Organic claims can be certified under standards such as GOTS where organic cultivation is documented. Degumming chemistry, a major environmental question for ramie, is not addressed by the fiber name.

This describes what rules and standards cover. It is not legal advice; jurisdiction, product form and current rule text control.

Frequently asked

What is ramie fabric?

Ramie is a bast fiber from the stems of Boehmeria nivea, a nettle-family plant long grown in East Asia. It is spun into crisp, lustrous yarns similar to linen and is sold alone or blended with cotton, linen, viscose or silk.

Why were ramie and cotton sweaters so common in the 1980s?

Under US textile import quotas of the period, garments made mostly of ramie were not subject to quota limits, so importers used ramie-majority blends. Congress ended ramie's quota-free status in 1986, and ramie blends became less common afterward.

Is ramie scratchy?

Well-degummed, finely spun ramie feels smooth and cool. Coarse or insufficiently degummed ramie leaves stiff fiber ends protruding from the yarn, which can feel prickly. Blending with cotton and enzyme finishing reduce the effect.

Is ramie the same as linen?

No. Ramie comes from Boehmeria nivea and linen from flax, Linum usitatissimum. They look and behave similarly, but ramie is typically more lustrous and stiffer, and US and EU labeling rules require each to be named correctly.

Sources

• Food and Agriculture Organization: Boehmeria nivea crop profile
• Plants: Improving ramie fiber, current progress and future directions in molecular breeding (2026)
• Carbohydrate Polymers: Elucidating structure of pectin in ramie fiber to customize enzyme cocktail for high-efficiency enzymatic degumming (2023)
• Journal of Biotechnology: Enzymatic degumming of ramie bast fibers (2000)
• Materials Science and Engineering C: Fiber from ramie plant (Boehmeria nivea), a novel suture biomaterial (2016)
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension, NF91-45: Ramie
• The Washington Post (1986): Popularity of ramie may weave fiber into US textile quotas
• ISO 3758:2023, Textiles, care labelling code using symbols (ISO Online Browsing Platform)
• RSC Advances (2026): Natural fibers in sustainable materials, extraction technologies, fiber modification and performance-sustainability relationships

Cite this page

Chaos. (2026). Ramie. In Fibers of Earth: An independent textile atlas. https://www.hendrickresearch.com/fibers/materials/ramie/