DESCRIPTION OF TWO SPECIES OF BOEHMERIA. 313 
being told that the species under consideration belong to the genus 
Boehmeria, will at once comprehend that the Boehmerias are of the 
NETTLE-FAMILY, and will call to mind many species of the same 
natural groupe, endowed with the same property, viz., that of yielding 
textile fibre, not even excepting our common stinging Nettle* (Urtica 
urens). Indeed, so closely is the genus Boehmeria allied to the true 
Nettles, that most of the species were by the older botanists considered 
and were called Urtice ; for example, the very two species we now have 
under consideration, viz., U. Puya, Roxb., and U. nivea, Linn. ~ 
Jacquin, in his * Selectarum Stirpium Americanarum Historia,’ 1763, | 
first established the genus Boehmeria, but so little did he understand the | 
genus himself, and so minute are the characters, that in 1770 he pub- 
lished a figure of Urtica nivea as still an Urtica, which is now univer- 
sally included in Boehmeria. The chief distinction consists in Urtica 
having a 2-valved perianth to the female flower ; while that of Boehmeria 
has a tubular perianth, more or less distinctly 4-lobed at the apex. 
Whenever the entire family of Urticee shall have received the attention 
it deserves from the studies of a competent botanist, the characters of 
these and allied genera will be reformed. Our object at present is 
chiefly with particular species. 
At p. 25 of the first volume of the present series of the ‘ Journal 
of Botany,’ or ‘Kew Garden Miscellany,’ we noticed a very valuable | 
textile from China, recently known to the merchants of Europe by the | ne 
name of * Chinese Grass," and the beautiful material manufactured | 
from it as Chinese Grass cloth. By the assistance of Dr. Wallich and | 
Sir George Staunton, we ascertained that this was no grass at all, but \ 
the produce of a kind of Nettle of the East Indies and China, known | 
to botanists as the Urtica nivea of Linnæus, or Boehmeria nivea, | 
Gaudichaud. Shortly after, at p. 159 of the same volume, we gave | 
an extract from a periodical at Berlin, * Naturforschende Freunde,’ in | 
which Dr. Miinter had endeavoured to show that the Chinese Grass | 
cloth was derived from the fibre of the Jute, Corchorus capsularis, a | — 
plant of which an account may be found at p. 25 of our same volume of - 
this Journal, and at p. 91 and tab. 3 of the following volume (vol. ii) ` i : 
À 
S 
* Mr. Seemann speaks of the great value of Boehmeria albida, on account of its 
fibre, in the Society Islands, and Dr. Campbell of the “ gigantic stinging Nettle” 
of Nepal and Sikkim (Urtica heterophylla, Willd.?) used in making cloth, called 
