A historical love affair with nettles…
There are few plants that we all inherently know and usually have a negative experience with. The nettle, or stinging nettle to be precise. There are six subspecies of nettle five of which produce small stinging hairs that we are so familiar with and have negative childhood memories of.
Nettles get a bad press for the most part and hopefully this post can go some way to reconnecting people with an amazing plant.
Firstly let us look at how to handle the nettle.
The nettle has, as we are all familiar with, stinging hairs called trichomes that inject histamine and formic acid into the skin of animals causing irritation and swelling.
If we want to gather stinging nettles to use for any of the reasons below we need to navigate around getting stung if we can help it. The best and easiest method is to use thick gloves to pick and strip the nettles. Failing that we need to look closer at how the needles form…
The stinging needles are only on the topside and the stem of the plant. At they lie away from the stem. Meaning that if you are careful and stroke the leaf from the stem to the tip of the leaf you won’t get stung. If you did this in the opposite direction the needles will be able to jab into you.
You can collect leaves with bare hands by grasping the underside of the leaf, where there are no stinging needles and folding in half lengthways. Making sure that the top side of the leaf is on the inside of the fold. You can then pluck the leaf safely.
Stripping the leaves off of the whole stem. Use gloves ideally, but generally a firm grasp of the stem and run you hand from the base of the plant to the top of the plant avoids the majority of the stingers allowing you to work with the stem.
Many folk remedies exist to treat the effect of a sting including dandelion, horsetail, and using a leaf from the Dock plant, the dock contains a source of antihistamine helping to reduce swelling and pain.
Where to find it?
Anywhere where humans have had an impact on the environment. Nettles like nitrate rich soil. So anywhere where humans interact with the soil, farms, gardens, allotments, parks etc. you are likely to find nettles.
Uses
Ok so we know how to collect the plant what can it be used for?
Food
Nettles are a great source of nutrients packed full of vitamin C, once cooked the chemicals that cause the sting are neutralised and can safely be eaten. Treat them like spring greens or, my favorite, blitz them up into a nettle pesto. A great recipe for nettle pesto can be found on the river cottage website.
Drunk as a tea, place a handful of fresh nettle leaves into some boiling water and let steep for a refreshing tea.
Nettles are rich in vitamins A and C, iron, potassium, manganese and calcium.
String
Once the leaves are separated from the stem the stem can be split and rolled into nettle string, without any processing of the fibers, resulting in a string which is surprisingly strong.
Wildlife diversity
Nettles are the exclusive food plant for several species of butterflies, like the tortoiseshell and peacock and is a food plant for many moths, including mouse moth, setaceous, Hebrew character, and angle shades, buff ermine, dot moth, the flame and the gothic.
Dye
During the second world war children were asked to collect nettles to make a dark green dye for camouflage. Green dye is surprisingly hard to comeby in nature because the green of nature is usually chlorophyll.
Keeping warm
Not one I would recommend trying, but the Romans, who, by the way, are believed to have introduced the nettle to Britain in the first place. Would flog themselves with nettles to help keep warm, especially in our cold northern territories.
Back pain and arthritis
Egyptians would use nettles as a herbal remedy to relieve the symptoms of back pain and arthritis.
Composting
Add netles to your compost heap as they are considered a composting accelerator. They are great for creating a liquid fertilizer if you leave them in water for a few weeks.
Basically, the ostracised nettle has had a bad press thanks to our own childhood experiences. But delve a little deeper and they make a fantastic addition to our lives and a tasty one at that. There are lots of things nettles can be used for so the next time you come across these fantastic plants, pause and take a moment to appreciate them in their entirety.