40 Fun Facts About Stinging Nettle

Which leaf, often found growing beside stinging nettles, is the traditional folk remedy rubbed on a nettle sting?

Dock is the classic cure, yet no chemical effect has ever been shown: the rubbing may simply distract the nerves, or the relief may be a placebo.

Which Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale has a princess knit stinging nettle shirts to free her enchanted brothers?

The Wild Swans has Elisa gather the nettles in graveyards and work in total silence, her hands blistering, because a single spoken word would kill her brothers.

A French idiom about not pushing your luck warns against shoving which relative into the stinging nettles?

Granny, or mémé, is the one in the French saying, which warns against abusing a situation; orties is the French word for nettles.

Which itchy skin rash has the medical name urticaria, from the Latin word for the stinging nettle?

Hives was first called urticaria by Scottish physician William Cullen in 1769, because the classic raised, itchy rash is the one that follows a brush with the plant.

Which British cheese is wrapped in stinging nettle leaves before maturing, giving it an edible rind?

Cornish Yarg is named after Alan and Jenny Gray, the farmers who found the old recipe in their attic: Yarg is simply Gray spelt backwards.

In Tibetan legend, the saint Milarepa's skin turned which colour after years of eating only stinging nettles?

Green is the colour his hair and skin are said to have turned during decades of solitary meditation, and he is reputed to have lived to 83 on the diet.

Which chemical, also released by the human body during allergic reactions, do stinging nettle hairs inject into skin?

Histamine arrives with serotonin and acetylcholine when a hair's brittle tip snaps off in the skin, which is why antihistamine creams can ease a bad sting.

A popular but thinly evidenced story says which country's army wore nettle-fibre uniforms during the First World War?

Germany is the country in the tale, which blames a wartime cotton shortage; nettle cloth itself is real, and modern European firms have sold it commercially.

Sea nettles share a name with the stinging nettle, but what kind of marine animal are they?

Jellyfish of the genus Chrysaora are the sea nettles, and the genus takes its own name from Chrysaor, the brother of Pegasus in Greek myth.

Which migratory garden butterfly relies on the stinging nettle as its caterpillars' primary host plant?

Red admiral caterpillars feed mainly on nettle leaves, so gardeners who leave a patch standing can draw the migrating butterflies in.

A common British belief, noted by William Camden in 1586, holds that which invaders introduced the stinging nettle?

Romans get the blame in the old story, but botanists now treat the plant as a British native, and nettle fibre has turned up in a far older Bronze Age burial.

Which botanist gave the stinging nettle its scientific name, Urtica dioica, in his 1753 book Species Plantarum?

Carl Linnaeus named it in the work that became the starting point for all plant naming, the first to give every species a two-part name consistently.

The stinging nettle gave English the adjective 'nettled', which describes a person in what mood?

Irritated or angry is the meaning, and the plant has crept into other languages too: in Dutch, a predicament is described with a word built on nettle.

Cooked stinging nettle leaves have a flavour most often compared to which familiar leafy vegetable?

Spinach is the usual comparison, and cooking or soaking is what makes the leaves safe, removing the sting so they can be handled and eaten.

Stinging nettle added to a laying hen's feed can replace synthetic pigments to colour which part of the egg?

Yolk colour deepens because nettle is rich in the pigments lutein and zeaxanthin, and as little as 6.25 g per kilo of feed matches the synthetic dyes.

A tale about a boy stung by a nettle, with the moral to grasp it boldly, is credited to which storyteller?

Aesop is credited with the tale, and its moral, that a nettle seized boldly hurts less than one touched timidly, echoes in the phrase 'grasp the nettle'.

Why does a stinging nettle sting less when it is gripped firmly than when it is lightly brushed?

Its hairs are crushed flat under a firm grip, so fewer of the brittle tips can pierce the skin, which is the botany behind the old advice to be bold.

Which country is home to ongaonga, a tree nettle whose sting has killed dogs, horses and even people?

New Zealand's ongaonga grows into a woody shrub up to three metres tall, and in 1961 a young hunter died five hours after walking through a patch of it.

Which Australian rainforest shrub of the nettle family has a sting that can torment victims for weeks or months?

Gympie-gympie, sometimes called the suicide plant, is reputed to be the most venomous plant in Australia; its name comes from the Gubbi Gubbi language.

Stinging nettle stems hold a fibre, coarser than cotton, traditionally used for the same purposes as which cloth?

Linen and nettle cloth are even made the same way, by retting: microbes break down the tissue that binds the fibres so they can be pulled free and spun.

Bronze Age nettle textiles, proof the plant has been woven for almost 3,000 years, were found in which Nordic country?

Denmark's Bronze Age burial sites held cloth woven from nettle, a fibre that later went into sailcloth, fishing nets and even paper.

Botanists place the stinging nettle's family in the same plant order as which popular garden flower?

Rose and nettle both sit in the order Rosales, a group that also takes in apples, strawberries, figs, elms, hops and cannabis.

White dead-nettle looks like a stinging nettle but cannot sting, and belongs instead to which plant family?

Mint relatives called dead-nettles earned the name because their look-alike leaves are 'dead', with no sting at all, and bumblebees flock to the white flowers.

Which Asian fibre crop, used for fabric for at least 6,000 years, belongs to the stinging nettle's plant family?

Ramie comes from the inner bark of Boehmeria nivea, and in good growing conditions its stalks can be harvested up to six times a year.

The brittle tips of stinging nettle hairs, which snap off in the skin, are stiffened with which substance?

Silica, the main ingredient of glass, hardens each tip so that it breaks off on contact and leaves a fine point that pierces the skin.

Which acid, named after the ants that spray it, is also found in the hairs of the stinging nettle?

Formic acid was long blamed for the sting, but a 2006 study of a Taiwanese nettle pinned the lasting pain on oxalic and tartaric acids instead.

A thriving patch of stinging nettles tells a gardener the soil is rich in phosphate and which other nutrient?

Nitrogen-hungry nettles flourish where the ground is fertile, and gardeners use the leaves in turn as a compost activator or steep them into a liquid plant feed.

In Europe, a dense stand of stinging nettles in open countryside can mark the site of what vanished feature?

An abandoned building leaves its mark because human and animal waste enriches the soil with phosphate, and nettles thrive on it long after the walls are gone.

Urtication, deliberately flogging the skin with stinging nettles, was a folk remedy meant to treat which ailment?

Rheumatism was the target: the nettles were applied to provoke inflammation, making them what old medicine called a rubefacient, a remedy that reddens the skin.

In Albania and its Balkan neighbours, simmered young stinging nettle leaves fill which layered pastry?

Börek makers pick the top baby leaves, simmer them and mix them with herbs and rice before spreading the filling between the layers of dough.

The stinging nettle's species name, dioica, is Greek for 'of two houses' and refers to which feature?

Separate male and female plants are the 'two houses': each nettle bears flowers of only one sex, unlike its smaller annual cousin, which carries both on one plant.

Which Shakespeare play has Hotspur liken danger to a nettle from which the flower of safety can be plucked?

Henry IV, Part 1 gives the image to the rebel Hotspur in Act II, one of several figures of speech that the nettle has lent to the English language.

After stinging nettles flower, their leaves develop gritty particles called cystoliths, made of which compound?

Calcium carbonate grit will not dissolve when boiled, so leaves picked after flowering are instead broken down with acid, as happens in fermentation.

A sash woven from nettle fibre was found in an early Bronze Age burial excavated in 2011 on which English moor?

Dartmoor's Whitehorse Hill cist, dated to between 1730 and 1600 BC, also held high-value beads, and the sash was perhaps made locally rather than traded in.

French botanist Charles Naudin found in 1874 that a day of which weather left stinging nettles harmless for a week?

Strong wind blowing for 24 hours did it, Naudin noticed at Collioure in the south of France, disarming the plants' hairs for an entire week.

In 2010, indigenous justice in which South American country punished serious crimes with public nettle floggings?

Ecuador's community justice had offenders whipped with stinging nettles in public while they were showered with ice-cold water.

Stinging nettle roots yield a dye of which colour, matching the plant's own bright roots and rhizomes?

Yellow dye comes from the roots, which share the colour with the plant's creeping rhizomes and stolons; the leaves give a second, leafier shade.

Cattle and sheep avoid fresh stinging nettles but will readily eat the plants in which condition?

Wilted or dry nettles are eaten freely by ruminants; fresh ones, though nutritious, are left alone by livestock and wildlife alike, presumably because of the sting.

In which Brothers Grimm fairy tale does a fleeing princess survive on raw nettles and later speak to a nettle plant?

Maid Maleen and her servant eat the raw plants while fleeing their war-ravaged kingdom, and her words to a nettle later help prove who she really is.

Allo, a fibre from the Himalayan giant nettle, is traditionally woven by the Gurung and Rai peoples of which country?

Nepal's hill communities turn allo into clothing, bags, floor mats and rope, and the plant's own sting can leave a painful rash for a week or more.