Grass-cloth.

Grass-cloth. This name is sometimes given by travellers and missionaries to different kinds of coarse cloth, made by various savage races, the fibre of which is rarely that of a grass. Cloth is, or at least has been, made from Bamboo (q.v.), and a coarse matting is made from Esparto (q.v.), both of which are true grasses. A fine cloth is woven from the fibre of a species of Bohmeria (q.v.), popularly called China-grass, but the plant is really a nettle.—To the nettle order also belongs the so-called Queensland Grass-cloth plant (Pipturus argenteus), which yields a fine, strong fibre.