ramie

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A tropical Asian perennial herb (Boehmeria nivea) having broad leaves and densely branched panicles of small, unisexual, apetalous flowers.
2. n. The flaxlike fiber from the stem of this plant, used in making fabrics and cordage.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A plant, the so-called China grass, Bœhmeria ni-vea, or its fiber. The plant is a perennial shrub with herbaceous shoots, native in the Malay islands, China, and Japan. It has long been cultivated in parts of the East Indies to supply fiber for fish-nets and cloths, and in China and Japan textiles of great beauty are made from this material. (See grass-cloth.) In length, thickness, and woodiness the stems most nearly resemble hemp. The fiber is unsurpassed in strength, is in an exceptional degree unaffected by moisture, in fineness rivals flax, and has a silky luster shared only by jute. The plant can be grown in any moderate climate—in the southern United States and as far north as New Jersey, as demonstrated by experiment. Also called cambric-grass, silk-grass, and ramie-hemp; in India, rhea. See cut under Bœhmeria.

Wiktionary

1. n. a tall, tropical Asian perennial herb, Boehmeria nivea, cultivated for its fibrous stems
2. n. the fibre extracted from this plant, resembling flax

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Bot.) The grasscloth plant (Bœhmeria nivea); also, its fiber, which is very fine and exceedingly strong; -- called also China grass, and rhea. See Grass-cloth plant, under grass.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. tall perennial herb of tropical Asia with dark green leaves; cultivated for the fiber from its woody stems that resembles flax