Stinging Nettle
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40 free Stinging Nettle trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Most people meet the stinging nettle the hard way, with a brush of bare skin against a leaf. Yet the weed behind that sting is one of the most useful and most storied in the temperate world, eaten, woven, brewed and written about for thousands of years. This quiz turns the best stinging nettle fun facts into questions: what actually happens when a nettle stings, which remedies and sayings grew up around it, where it turns up in fairy tales and kitchens, and which fierce relatives grow on the far side of the globe. It suits gardeners, foragers, walkers, students and anyone who has ever been stung and wondered why. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing far more about this prickly neighbour than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which leaf, often found growing beside stinging nettles, is the traditional folk remedy rubbed on a nettle sting?
Dock
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.
Q 02Which Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale has a princess knit stinging nettle shirts to free her enchanted brothers?
The Wild Swans
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.
Q 03A French idiom about not pushing your luck warns against shoving which relative into the stinging nettles?
Granny
Granny, or mémé, is the one in the French saying, which warns against abusing a situation; orties is the French word for nettles.
Q 04Which itchy skin rash has the medical name urticaria, from the Latin word for the stinging nettle?
Hives
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.
Q 05Which British cheese is wrapped in stinging nettle leaves before maturing, giving it an edible rind?
Cornish Yarg
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.
Q 06In Tibetan legend, the saint Milarepa's skin turned which colour after years of eating only stinging nettles?
Green
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.
Q 07Which chemical, also released by the human body during allergic reactions, do stinging nettle hairs inject into skin?
Histamine
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.
Q 08A popular but thinly evidenced story says which country's army wore nettle-fibre uniforms during the First World War?
Germany
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.
Q 09Sea nettles share a name with the stinging nettle, but what kind of marine animal are they?
Jellyfish
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.
Q 10Which migratory garden butterfly relies on the stinging nettle as its caterpillars' primary host plant?
Red admiral
Red admiral caterpillars feed mainly on nettle leaves, so gardeners who leave a patch standing can draw the migrating butterflies in.
Q 11A common British belief, noted by William Camden in 1586, holds that which invaders introduced the stinging nettle?
Romans
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.
Q 12Which botanist gave the stinging nettle its scientific name, Urtica dioica, in his 1753 book Species Plantarum?
Carl Linnaeus
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.
Q 13The stinging nettle gave English the adjective 'nettled', which describes a person in what mood?
Irritated
Q 21Bronze Age nettle textiles, proof the plant has been woven for almost 3,000 years, were found in which Nordic country?
Denmark
Denmark's Bronze Age burial sites held cloth woven from nettle, a fibre that later went into sailcloth, fishing nets and even paper.
Q 22Botanists place the stinging nettle's family in the same plant order as which popular garden flower?
Rose
Rose and nettle both sit in the order Rosales, a group that also takes in apples, strawberries, figs, elms, hops and cannabis.
Q 23White dead-nettle looks like a stinging nettle but cannot sting, and belongs instead to which plant family?
Mint
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.
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.
Q 14Cooked stinging nettle leaves have a flavour most often compared to which familiar leafy vegetable?
Spinach
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.
Q 15Stinging nettle added to a laying hen's feed can replace synthetic pigments to colour which part of the egg?
Yolk
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.
Q 16A tale about a boy stung by a nettle, with the moral to grasp it boldly, is credited to which storyteller?
Aesop
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'.
Q 17Why does a stinging nettle sting less when it is gripped firmly than when it is lightly brushed?
Its hairs are crushed flat
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.
Q 18Which country is home to ongaonga, a tree nettle whose sting has killed dogs, horses and even people?
New Zealand
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.
Q 19Which Australian rainforest shrub of the nettle family has a sting that can torment victims for weeks or months?
Gympie-gympie
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.
Q 20Stinging nettle stems hold a fibre, coarser than cotton, traditionally used for the same purposes as which cloth?
Linen
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.
Q 24Which Asian fibre crop, used for fabric for at least 6,000 years, belongs to the stinging nettle's plant family?
Ramie
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.
Q 25The brittle tips of stinging nettle hairs, which snap off in the skin, are stiffened with which substance?
Silica
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.
Q 26Which acid, named after the ants that spray it, is also found in the hairs of the stinging nettle?
Formic
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.
Q 27A thriving patch of stinging nettles tells a gardener the soil is rich in phosphate and which other nutrient?
Nitrogen
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.
Q 28In Europe, a dense stand of stinging nettles in open countryside can mark the site of what vanished feature?
An abandoned building
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.
Q 29Urtication, deliberately flogging the skin with stinging nettles, was a folk remedy meant to treat which ailment?
Rheumatism
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.
Q 30In Albania and its Balkan neighbours, simmered young stinging nettle leaves fill which layered pastry?
Börek
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.