Ramie

 Ramie

 Nettle Chinese, white  ramie,  boehmeria  snow-white (an armour. Boehmeria nivea) — a kind of plants from family nettle the native land from east Asia. It is used in fabric products.

 The fibre ramie possesses significant durability (see table 1) and is not subject almost to rotting that allows to use it for manufacture of ropes. In the past the fibre also was widely used for a sailing fabric. Shine of a fibre ramie reminds silk, it easily gives in to colouring without loss of silkiness, therefore can be applied in dear matters. Also fibres ramie  are applied to manufacturing dear grades of the paper going, for example, for a press of bank notes.

 

resistance	ramie	hemp	flax	silk	cotton
stretching %	100	36	25	13	12
break %	100	75	66	400	100
spinning %	100	95	80	600	400

 Fibres ramie are one of the most ancient materials, used mankind. So fibres of this plant have been found out in textiles from a Scythian burial place of the beginning of III century up to B.C.. In Rishanovckiy a barrow near Kiev [1]

   Development from a fibre ramie various products has been traditionally widespread in China and Japan. The Europe has got acquainted with them for the first time in Elizabeth's I reign when to England gentle fabrics from the Chinese nettle have been brought. Inhabitants of the Netherlands brought from island of Java similar fabrics from a nettle (Netel-Dock), carried in France the name of "lawns". In Holland from Indian ramie even manufactured cloths.

   The first serious the attention on ramie was turned by Englishmen who have entered culture ramie in Calcutta, and then in northern part Hindustan. From the beginning of XIX century attempts to enter culture ramie and in the Europe, in the south of France, in Tuscany, Bavaria, Belgium, and also in Algeria, Mexico and the USA (mainly — Louisiana and California) have got to. In 1870th years the culture ramie has appeared on Antilles and South America, and then in Russia in Central Asia and on Caucasus, especially at the Black Sea coast.

 The main obstacle to dissemination of culture was ignorance with rational receptions of culture and absence of mechanisms for branch of a fibre from stalks and special machine tools for a yarn from рами. In China, Japan and India such works were spent manually. Later there are the machines, allowed to avoid labour-consuming manual work. Machine Fave (Favier) allowed to separate dry fibres from stalks. Other machine of the inventor Odds (Faure) separated fibres in a green condition.