The textile in this scan is courtesy of the garden's new education coordinator, Nadine Diner, who purchased the item during a recent trip to the Jalapão region of Brazil. The object is woven from the scapes of capim dourado – golden grass (Syngonanthus nitens) – and bound with fibres of buriti palm (Mauritia flexuosa).

Despite its common name, it isn't a true grass – it belongs to the family Eriocaulaceae, not the grass-encompassing Poaceae.

Instead of rewriting what already exists online, I'll direct you to the best resources: a short summary of capim dourado with photographs; some of the textile products made with capim dourado; two galleries of photographs from the Jalapão region (gallery 1 accompanied by a written blurb and gallery 2); “O brilho do Capim Dourado” (in Portuguese, accompanied by photographs) and the dissertation of Isabel Schmidt (PDF), who studied the optimal time to harvest Syngonanthus nitens (again, mostly in Portuguese).