Stinging nettle

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ Pistillate flowers consist of a perianth and a single carpel, surmounted by a brush-like stigma. The name of the genus is from the Latin uro, to burn, in reference to the sensation produced by the stings.
I. The Great Nettle (Urtica dioica) , is the species figured. It is our largest native nettle, and attains the height of 4 or 5 feet, the stem rising from a branching perennial rootstock which throws out runners. The large leaves are saw-edged, and apart from the stinging hairs are downy. Flower spikes given off in pairs, each spike consisting of either staminate or pistillate flowers only ”

“ It need scarcely be said that these stinging-hairs must have much more severe effects on the mucous membrane of the mouth of grazing animals than on the human skin, and that they are therefore an excellent protection for the plants. As a matter of fact we never find our nettle patches eaten away, and even the donkey, which eats thistles freely, turns away from the stinging-nettle. ”

“ We shall not have far to look for the three weeds which I want to show you this morning. The first of them is the Stinging Nettle. It grows round the wood-pile in the middle of the poultry-yard, and there are great clumps of it beside the hedge which divides the poultry-yard from the kitchen garden.
It is really a very handsome plant, though you may not have thought so before. Look how tall and straight the stems are, and how evenly and regularly the dark green pointed leaves grow from it. They grow in pairs, on opposite sides of the stem, and are serrated. ”

“ Not so large. An annual; leaves smooth but for the stinging hairs, margin entire or toothed. Male flowers in panicles, female gathered in heads. Flowers larger than in dioica. Under walls and among rubbish, near habitations, chiefly in the Eastern counties, and near the sea. June to August.
III. Small Nettle (U. urens) . The familiar annual plant of fields and wastes. Leaves coarsely toothed, smooth but for stinging hairs. Panicles containing flowers of both sexes; few flowered. Flowers June to September.
Great Stinging Nettle.
Urtica dioica.
—Urticaceæ.—
Cat’s Valerian. ”

“ It can not be doubted that the true nettle is protected by its power of stinging; and, that being so, it is scarcely less clear that the dead-nettle must be protected by its likeness to the other. Moreover, though I was fortunate in lighting on so good an illustration as that shown in the figure just when I had the opportunity of photographing it, still every one must have observed that the two species are very commonly found growing together. ”

“ If one of these wretches comes in contact with the human skin, it is found to sting like a nettle, only much more severely, and hence its scientific name. A swimmer stung by contact with an acaleph feels not only the cruel smarting of the nettle-like and burning stinging, but he is in a few minutes frequently overcome by a feeling of languor and sickness, that lasts for a considerable time, and is sometimes only relieved by a violent fit of vomiting, just as if he was a sufferer for the moment under the influence of a powerful emetic. ”

“ Out of the fluffy seeds of the willow one Tinea forms a sort of muff in which it lives. Other species of the group form little tents upon the leaves of the elm, oak, and many kinds of fruit-trees, these cases being so minute as to be unobserved unless the insect is moving within. One of the most remarkable of all the species is one which inhabits the leaves of the nettle. The tent looks like a tiny hedgehog, as it is formed of minute portions of the leaf glued together and studded all over with the stinging hairs of the nettle. ”

“ Is it not extraordinary that there are caterpillars which live on the nettle?—that they eat the leaves of this plant, armed as it is with stinging bristles, which cause such smarting and itching to the skin, and produce blisters upon it. ”

“ A smaller stinging-plant, resembling our nettle, only larger, with a rough under side of pale pea-green, is also found at intervals in the forest; both sides of the leaf possess the power of irritation. The natives 324use it as a universal specific for all ailments. As soon as they come on a clump of this plant the women discard their loads and gather bundles of the leaves, which they carefully preserve for future requirements. It is also applied probably for the sheer pleasure of it when they have no actual disorder, and it is quite common for them to rub their bodies lightly with the leaves. ”

“ It is very tame, sits still to be petted, and screams like a parrot."
Nettle-tree, n. Two species of Laportea, N.O. Urticaceae, large scrub-trees, are called by this name—Giant Nettle, L. gigas, Wedd., and Small-leaved Nettle, L. photiniphylla, Wedd.; they have rigid stinging hairs. These are both species of such magnitude as to form timber-trees. A third, L. moroides, Wedd., is a small tree, with the stinging hairs extremely virulent. See also preceding words. /??/
1849. J. P. Townsend, `Rambles in New South Wales,' p. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wood ant is able to eject this poisonous substance to some distance, and if a nest be broken open, and a bare hand placed within the aperture, it will be speedily covered with a thousand little dots of pungent fluid, and if the skin be very sensitive, will smart as though it had been plunged into a bunch of stinging nettles. ”

“ The garden, indeed, lay beautiful in decay, for there, as everywhere in this deserted countryside, the golden ragwort had taken possession; but within the walls of the house only nettles shivered.
“You’ll always find nettles in deserted human habitations. I don’t know why,” said Mr. Ingleby. “There is a rather unusual botanical curiosity to be found among the workings at Cold Harbour,” he went on, “the Roman Nettle. Urtica . . . Urtica. . . . My memory isn’t what it used to be. It has a bigger leaf than the ordinary nettle and a much more poisonous sting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a dark green, rankly growing plant, from one to two feet high, that asks no leave of anybody. It is the police that protects every flower in the hedge. To "pluck the flower of safety from the nettle danger" is a figure of speech that has especial force in this island. The species of our own nettle with which I am best acquainted, the large-leaved Canada nettle, grows in the woods, is shy and delicate, is cropped by cattle, and its sting is mild. But apparently no cow's tongue can stand the British nettle, though, when cured as hay, it is said to make good fodder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Reaching my hand into the hedgerow to pick a long, lithe, blossoming spray of black byrony—here it is, with its graceful climbing stem, its glossy, heart-shaped leaves and its pretty greenish lily flowers—I have stung myself rather badly against the nettles that grow rank and tall from the rich mud in the ditch below. Nothing soothes a nettle sting like philosophy and dock-leaf ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Our common English nettle, which grows everywhere along road-sides and waste places, is bad enough in this respect; but the smaller nettle—a foreign importation of more strictly civilized and urban habits, never found far from human habitations—is still crueler and more poisonous; while the South European Roman nettle, accustomed for innumerable generations to the fierce struggle against Italian civilization, has developed an advanced and excruciating sting, which beats the puny efforts of our own species into complete insignificance, as the virus of the hornet beats the virus of the hive-bee. ”

“ How in the midst of this darkness were we to find the Jas, buried in the depth of the wood? Two plants which always follow man, Good King Henry (Chenopodium Bonus Henricus) and the nettle, served me as a clue. I swept my free hand through the air as I walked, and at each sting I knew there was a nettle and an indication. Verlot, our rearguard, made similar lunges, and supplied the want of sight by the burning stings. Our companions showed no faith in this style of research. They talked of continuing the wild descent and of returning if necessary to Bedoin. ”

“ There is a great deal more in nettles, I believe, than most people are apt to imagine; indeed, the nettle-philosophy at present current with the larger part of the world seems to me lamentably one-sided. As a rule, the sting is the only point in the whole organization of the family over which we ever waste a single thought. This is our ordinary human narrowness; in each plant or animal we interest ourselves about that one part alone which has special reference to our own relations with it, for good or for evil. In a strawberry, we think only of the fruit ”

“ There is another Indian nettle, called Urtica heterophylla, which produces a strong, fine, white, glossy fibre. Best known by the name of the Neilgherry nettle, it is nevertheless widely diffused over India. The stem, branches, and leaves are covered with stiff sharp bristles, which give it a formidable, or, as some say, a ferocious appearance. These also inflict acute pain if they should happen to be touched, but fortunately the effect of the sting soon passes away. The prepared fibre of this plant is sometimes called vegetable wool ”

“ Scarcely any beast, observes a Swedish naturalist, will touch the nettle, but fifty different kinds of insects are fed by it.950 Some of these seize upon the root, others upon the stem; some eat the leaves, others devour the seeds and flowers; but for this multitude of enemies, the nettle (Urtica dioica) , which is now found in all the four quarters of the globe, would annihilate a great number of plants. Linnæus tells us, in his "Tour in Scania," that goats were turned into an island which abounded with the Agrostis arundinacea, where they perished by famine ”