A study concerning some characters of ten ramie varieties (Boehmeria nivea Gaud.) and its relationship with the presence or absense of stalk pith is reported.The following international varieties were considered: saikeiseishin-shun, london, tatsutyama, izu-kairyo, chiayi, tsuannan n.° 2, toakan, kokuhi, E 49-63 and tatsuka-kairyo. The characters studied were: weight-green stalk, dry stalk, dry fibers, fiber content in green and dry stalk, diameter and length of stalk and fineness and length of fibers. In some varieties, the stalks with pith showed superior performance with relation to characters of weight, fiber content in green stalk, diameter and length of stalk. For all varieties, no differences were observed for the characters of fiber content in dry stalk and length of fibers in respect to the presence or absence of stalk pith. For the character fineness of fiber, only one variety (tatsuka-kairyo) presented superior performance for the stalks with absence of pith. When the varieties were confronted two and two, such for the presence or absence of stalk pith, they showed different behaviour in relation to the characters studied. The stalks with presence or absence of pith of varieties Saikeiseishin-shun, E 49-63 and Tatsuka-kairyo, presented higher values for the characters tested, with except for fineness of fibers whose values were the lowest and could be considered in the future breeding program. The results obtained show that it is possible to make a selection work with the objective to obtain certain characteristics of rami.