Nettles

“ It is partly because it is so well known, and partly because so few people use their eyes analytically, that a certain little mystery of the plant is so well guarded. For almost any bed of nettles may well tempt the young entomologist to tarry, while he forgets the tingling fingers as he fills his collecting-box with welcome specimens.
We are sure to have company if we linger long about our nettles. There is a small brood of butterflies which we can always count upon. Here is one of them coming over the meadow. ”

“ The unobservant pedestrian who may linger by the wayside to pluck something which strikes his fancy in the low hedgebank, must often have dreaded the touch of the harmless dead nettles, under the belief that these plants were the widely different, though similarly leaved, “stinging” nettles. If disabused of this impression and induced to handle a flowering stem of the purple dead nettle, with square stem and whorl of stalkless axillary blossoms, he will marvel at the singular-looking corolla, separated from its calyx of five sepals. ”

“ The young leaves or tops, when chopped up, are good for poultry, especially for turkeys. So nettles are useful, you see--not merely stinging weeds. The Nettle, too, is a relation of the hemp plant from which we get our string and ropes. ”

“ One day he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up nettles; he examined the plants, which were uprooted and already dried, and said: “They are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to know how to make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes an excellent vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of animals ”

“ Its caterpillar is not very well protected with bristles, not at all when compared with the Woolly-bear, but it lives in the nettles, and, whether they like it or not, the hospitable nettles with their stings protect the caterpillar. The crawler may be grateful, but he shows it in a poor way, for he turns on the faithful nettle, and eats it up. In fact the only food he cares about is nettle-salad, and he indulges in it several times a day, yes all day long, eating, growing and bursting his skin a number of times, till he is big enough to hang himself up for the winter, probably in a nettle. ”

“ Almost any group of nettles will show us our "comma" caterpillar, but one of its favorite haunts is the wood-nettle, a large-leaved, low variety, which is to be found in moist woods and shady river-banks, and will be recognized by the illustration on the preceding page. I have gathered many of these animated tented leaves in a few moments' search among the plants. ”

“ This herb with the vervain is supposed to form Count Mattaei's noted nostrum Febrifugo.
NETTLE. No plant is more commonplace and plentiful in our fields and hedges throughout an English summer than the familiar stinging Nettle. And yet most persons unknowingly include under this single appellation several distinct herbs. Actually as Nettles are to be found: the annual Urtica dioica, or true Stinging Nettle ”

“ Into the calyxes of these little flowers it thrust its proboscis, and sucked a sweet juice therefrom; for at the bottom of the calyx of almost every flower there is a drop of sweet juice which God has provided for the nourishment of insects,—bees, drones, butterflies, and many other little creatures.
The butterfly then flew to the bunch of nettles on the hill. The large nettle which had stung Karine's finger now bore three white bell-shaped flowers, which looked like a crown on the top of the stalk, and many others were nearly out. ”

“ I once brought home from Brittany some roots of Linaria repens, that looked charming by a roadside, and planted them in a bit of Alpine garden, a planting that I never afterwards ceased to regret.
I learnt from an old farmer a good way of getting rid of a bed of nettles—to thrash them down with a stick every time they grow up. If this is done about three times during the year, the root becomes so much weakened that it is easily forked out, or if the treatment is gone on with, the second year the nettles die. Thrashing with a stick is better than cutting, as it makes the plant bleed more ”

“ Nettles be a luxury. Now, if ever you suffers from the rheumatics mind you tries nettles, they beat all the doctor’s medicine; they just do.” And we promised to think the matter over. The idea of any one ever growing crops of nettles in their kitchen-gardens amused us. Still the weed, vegetable I mean, may have hidden virtues{128} I wot not of; and possibly it is not altogether wise to dismiss as absolute nonsense every item of country folk-lore one comes upon. ”

“ Nettles and sourdock are now at their best and only need to be picked. With the pioneers they were at once a medicine and a food, for the long winters, with no vegetables, often bred scurvy and other disorders, so that their first care in the early spring was to feed lustily on greens. Nettles are coarse and have a peculiar brackish taste and yet are not unpalatable. ”

“ From their general presence in the neighbourhood of houses, or in spots where house refuse is deposited, it has been suggested that the nettles are not really natives, a supposition that to some extent receives countenance from the circumstance that the young shoots are very sensitive to frost. In any case they follow man in his migrations, and by their presence usually indicate a soil rich in nitrogen. The trailing subterranean root-stock renders the common nettle somewhat difficult of extirpation. ”

“ When he had been jumped at from behind, had been shaken, and had had his ears boxed so that they burned and hurt even after he was put to bed, he learned that the nettles he had cut down were not nettles at all, but were called Coal-yusses, and were very precious, and that lie was a very naughty little boy. ”

“ At least two species of nettles were found in bloom, but as far as showiness goes they might as well have been in fruit! Around Los Angeles there is a very coarse, tall species (Urtica Breweri, Wat.) , which reaches above a person's head, and is loaded with the green panicles of flowers. The leaves are frequently six inches long and finely pubescent. The stems are hispid, and the stinging hairs produce a burning sensation upon the flesh that is akin to numbness, which lasts for several days. ”

“ If you happen to get stung by a nettle do not bathe your hand with cold water; that will only make the pain worse. While you are waiting for the pain to pass off remember that in India there are nettles whose sting causes great pain which lasts for several days. ”

“ LABIATE PLANT.
a. Stamens.
b. Corolla.
c. Calyx.
STING OF NETTLE, MAGNIFIED.
The nettles of foreign countries have much greater poisonous properties. The effects of incautiously handling some East Indian species are terrible. The first pain is compared with the pain inflicted by a red-hot iron; this increases and continues for days. A French botanist was once stung by one of these nettles in the Botanical Gardens of Calcutta; he says the pain so affected the lower part of his face that he feared lock-jaw. He did not get rid of the pain till nine days had expired. Dr. ”

“ This species (Plate 35, Fig. 10) is more generally distributed and common than any other of the group. Wherever nettles grow in quantity there we may expect to find this moth in its season, that is, in June and July. In favourable years there is sometimes a second flight, on a small scale, in the autumn; this was the case in 1905.
The caterpillar is green, with raised dots, from each of which a brownish hair arises; the line along the middle of the back is dark, and those along the sides are yellowish; the head is ochreous brown. It feeds on nettles in May and June. ”

“ Even if they would serve as well as cultivated plants, and could be economically gathered from many widely scattered localities, all the wild nettles growing in our waste places and old churchyards would be a bagatelle in the sense of furnishing material for many large spinning-mills. ”

“ If a leaf of the plant be put upon the tongue and pressed against the roof of the mouth, it will stop a bleeding from the nose. Taken as a fresh young vegetable in the spring, or early summer, Nettle tops make a very wholesome and succulent dish of greens, which is slightly laxative; but during Autumn they are hurtful. In Italy where herb soups are in high favour, "herb knodel" (or round balls made like a dumpling in size and consistency) of Nettles are esteemed as nourishing and medicinal. ”

“ It generally builds its nest at some little height from the ground in thorn, briar, bramble, gooseberry, and other bushes growing in woods, clumps of trees in the proximity of streams, orchards, shrubberies, gardens, and hedgerows. Sometimes the structure, which is made of straws, blades of dead grass, and rootlets, lined with horsehair, is hung amongst nettles like that of a Whitethroat, or placed low down in long grass, mixed with taller wild plants. ”

“ Men and their lives are very like the different growths of our woods; the noble 178 magnolia, all odoriferous, has frequently the teasing nettle growing so near its large trunk as to sometimes be touched by it. Edinburgh contains a Walter Scott, a Wilson, a Jameson, but it contains also many nettles of the genus Mammalia, amongst which men hold a very prominent station. Now I have run into one of these latter gentry. To speak out at once, one of my drawings was gently purloined last evening from the rooms of the Institution. ”

“ But the nettle probably carries the same tendency to the furthest possible limit. Not content with mere defense, it is to some extent actively aggressive. The hairs which clothe it have become filled with a poisonous, irritating juice, and when any herbivore thrusts his tender nose into the midst of a clump, the sharp points pierce his naked skin, the liquid gets into his veins in the very neighborhood of the most sensitive nerves, and the poor creature receives at once a lifelong warning against attacking nettles in future. ”

“ A kind of rennet is made in the Highlands of Scotland, by adding a quart of salt to three pints of a liquor produced by the boiling of nettles. A tablespoonful of this is said to be sufficient to coagulate a bowl of milk. From the fibrous stalks of the nettle, dressed in the manner of flax or hemp, cloth and paper may be made. The manufacture of these has been pursued with success in some parts of the Continent; and in our own country a coarse kind of canvass has been produced from them. The roots, when boiled, communicate a yellow colour to woollen cloth, linen, and cotton. ”

“ Just in the same way nettles have acquired their sting and thistles their prickles, which efficiently protect them against all herbivores except the patient, hungry donkey, who gratefully accepts them as a sort of sauce piquante to the succulent stems. ”

“ The nest of the whitethroat is a round, flimsy structure, formed of slender stalks of grass and herbs, and lined with horsehair, and is placed two or three feet above the ground, in the brambles and briers of the hedge, or in a large furze-bush. The five eggs are of a greenish white, speckled with olive, and sometimes blotched and marked with grey and light brown. One brood only is reared. [66] Nettle-creeper is a common name for this bird, on account of its love of weeds, especially of nettles, no doubt because the small caterpillars it feeds on are most abundant on them. ”

“ It is true that many substances, as opal, are blue, or green, by reflected light, yellow by transmitted; but air, if blue at all, is blue always by transmitted light. I hear of a wonderful solution of nettles, or other unlovely herb, which is green when shallow,—red when deep. Perhaps some day, as the motion of 107 the heavenly bodies by help of an apple, their light by help of a nettle, may be explained to mankind. ”

“ Hooker, op. cit., i. 182. The fibres of some nettles are twisted for bowstrings, others as thread for sewing and weaving, while many are eaten raw and in soups, especially the numerous little succulent species. The Urtica crenulata, or great shrubby nettle, grows also in these parts. Hooker, op. cit., ii. 188.— (W. R.) ↑
11 On the Lepchas, see Dr. ”

“ I doubt whether the stinging nettle, which renders picnicking a nuisance in England, is truly indigenous; certainly the two worst kinds, the smaller nettle and the Roman nettle, are quite recent denizens, never straying, even at the present day, far from the precincts of farmyards and villages. The shepherd's-purse and many other common garden weeds of cultivation are of Eastern origin, and came to us at first with the seed-corn and the peas from the Mediterranean region. Corn-cockles and corn-flowers are equally foreign and equally artificial ”

“ Net′tle, species of Urtica, a genus containing about 30 species widely distributed. The best known nettle is U. dioica, known as the stinging nettle, which is a native of Europe and Asia, but has become extensively naturalized in the United States. It is densely beset with stinging hairs. At the base of each hair is a small gland secreting a poisonous fluid. It grows from two to three feet high and is common in waste places. ”

“ Nettle, net′l, n. a common plant covered with hairs which sting sharply.—v.t. to fret, as a nettle does the skin: to irritate.—ns. Nett′le-cloth, thick japanned cotton cloth used for leather; Nett′le-fish, a jelly-fish, sea-nettle; Nett′lerash, a kind of fever characterised by a rash or eruption on the skin; Nett′le-tree, a genus of trees, with simple and generally serrated leaves, the fruit a fleshy, globose, one-celled drupe; Nett′le-wort, any plant of the nettle family. ”