Boehmeria nivea
species of plant
Boehmeria nivea, commonly known as ramie, Chinese grass or Chinese silk plant, is a monoecious shrub or subshrub in the family Urticaceae commonly found in China. It is native to warm temperate and tropical regions of the eastern Himalaya, and east and southeastern Asia. It grows to 2 metres tall, with alternately-arranged leaves 7–15 cm long and 6–12 cm broad, oval-acuminate with a serrated margin. Boehmeria nivea has been cultivated in China and elsewhere in southeast Asia for thousands of years, as the source of the fibre crop ramie. It has been introduced into tropical and subtropical parts of other continents, such the southeastern United States.
Taxonomy
Boehmeria nivea was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753 as Urtica nivea. In 1830, Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré transferred it to the genus Boehmeria, which had been established by Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin in 1760. The species has acquired a substantial number of synonyms, most in the genera Boehmeria and Urtica. Some varieties have been proposed but are not accepted: Boehmeria nivea var. tenacissima and Boehmeria nivea var.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Boehmeria nivea” as species of plant. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of plant. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q750467. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1753, 1830 and 1760.
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This entry incorporates text from “Boehmeria nivea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.