Stinging Nettle: Food for the soul

Nettle (Urtica dioica) is one of our best known wild plants. It makes us aware of its presence through its not so subtle sting, and for this reason it tends to be avoided. While most people will have heard of nettle soup, few will have taken the time to really get to know this incredible plant that has so much to offer us. When you start to get to know nettle through the seasons of the year, you realise that it has so much more to offer - it is nourishing in every way possible.

Nettle seeds

Nettles as social beings

The great thing about getting to know nettle is that it will be your companion wherever you go. Originally native to Europe, stinging nettles are now found worldwide in fertile, disturbed, and moist areas, including gardens, fields, hedgerows, woodland edges, and roadsides. In truth, they like to grow where we are, as they are fans of fertile soils where people and animals have left their nitrogen - rich mark.  This is a great example of the symbiosis between humans and wild plants - a reminder that we are all interconnected and can nourish one another. 

The botanical name Urtica dioica translates to 'to burn' (Urtica) and 'of two houses' (dioica)," highlighting its dioecious characteristic where male and female flowers grow on separate plants. They grow in mini societies really, as you can often seen the male and female plants growing in clumps next to each other - the difference between them quite obvious when you see them in flower or seed. You can tell because the female plants look very full heavy and the male equivalents are quite sparse and a bit more pointy. The Handmade Apothecary has a great video on this, but I've included photos below for your reference.

Female nettle seeds - very heavy and droopy!

Male nettle

How do you identify nettles?

Drawing of nettle from a book published in 1944

While most people will know roughly what a nettle looks like, there are a number of false nettles around (also known as 'dead nettles' - these are also edible). To the untrained eye, they look very similar. In all and complete honesty, the surest way to identify a stinging nettle is to touch it. If it stings, it's a nettle.

This is a great identifying feature - meaning that there is no possible confusion for the novice forager (if you do want to get into foraging, sign up to my newsletter and I'll send you a check list!)

However, if you don't want to go down the 'let's get stung' road (understandable), look for hairs on its stem, its drooping catkin flowers, and its oval, toothed leaves.

Nettle leaf

Dead nettles are in the mint family and have square stems, and flowers - white, purple or yellow. These are very distinct from the catkin flowers of the true nettle.

Getting to know nettle throughout the seasons is a fantastic way to map the cycle of the year. You will see it pop up with fresh, green juicy leaves in the spring then grow through to the summer when the flowers start to form and go from green to black seeds. Then in the Autumn, another fresh batch of leaves appears as the earth offers us a 'second spring' before the quiet of winter.

Why do nettles sting?

Nettle evolved to sting as a form of defense mechanism; the fine hairs you can see in the above photo are hollow and made of silica and act as a sort of hypodermic needle.

When touched, the fragile tip snaps off and injects a chemical cocktail including histamine, formic acid, acetylcholine and serotonin into the skin which triggers a burning sensation. Interestingly, the sting disappears entirely once nettles are dried, crushed, or cooked.

Interestingly, dead nettles evolved to look like the nettle precisely so that animals would stay away from them! It's a great example of plants having the intelligence to mimick other plants in order to survive. It reminds me a bit of how lords and ladies (arum maculatum) has evolved to mimic a rotting carcus to attract pollinators - see my recent plant profile for more on this!)

Stinging nettle as a super food

You may have heard that nettle is a super food - it is. It has over three times more iron than spinach, more vitamin c than oranges and more calcium than milk. Because of its long roots and role as a dynamic accumulator, it also has the ability to pull up nutrients including trace elements such as boron which supports bone density and muscle strength, preventing osteoporosis.

If you would like to forage stinging nettle as food, pick the first two or three sets of leaves only as they are the freshest. I tend to snip them with some scissors straight into a tuperware box that I put straight in my basket. You can then use it pretty much as you'd use cooked spinach - so added to soups, stews, and sauces. You can keep dried nettle leaves in the kitchen to sprinkle into food all year round as well.

It's also great in a tea, mixed with elderflower in the spring to help fight allergies, or with lemon to help increase your iron uptake (vitamin C helps with iron absorption, as I learnt when I was pregnant).

Once the plant goes to flower and then seed, you can collect the female seeds - these are incredibly nutritious and great sprinkled on salad, yoghurt and more. They are crunchy and a great energy booster! This is still the only foraged food my husband proactively asks me for if we have run out!

However - a warning to the wise - don't use the leaves ones the plant has flowered as uric acid crystals can form in the leaves which is irritating to the kidneys.

Nettle seed sprinkled on yoghurt with some foraged blackberries

In his book, "Weeds in the Heart", intuitive herbalist Nathaniel Hugues explores nettle as a form of milk from mother earth - so full of nutrients that it is healing and nourishing both nutritionally and spiritually. He says that:

Nettle offers a fullness, a richness and healing for that which is deficient or lacking. As these deficiencies are met, the body can step into its full potential, indeed its full glory, unhindered by our past" - Nathaniel Hughes, Weeds in the Heart

What is the medicinal use of nettle?

Nettle is a great example of 'let food be thy medicine' - and it has been featured ever since the early herbals were put together, mentioned by Dioscorides (1st Century), Pliny the Elder (23-79 ad), medieval herbals including "the leechbook of bald" and by Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth century.

Nowadays, nettle is still used by medical herbalists to heal amaenia, stress, allergies, arthritis, eczema, hair and nails and weak skin (The Handmade Apothecary). There are even examples of people stinging themselves with nettles as the sting can alleviate the symptoms of arthritis - the process is called urtication and the theory is that increased blood flow and immune response helps with chronic pain relief. I mentioned it to my grandma, but she wasn't convinced enough to try it!

And if you do get stung by nettle, the perfect remedy is often growing nearby: Plantain. As you can read on my recent plantain plant profile, it's pretty effective. I use this often with my daughter - chewing the plantain leaves and then putting them on her sting to make a makeshift poultice. It really works!

My basket full of foraged nettle (along with some heather)

Nettle as fabric

Nettle has a long history of being used to make fabric. Interestingly, the root of the word 'nettle' comes from its relation to binding, or tying - coming from the come from the Proto-Germanic root natilā or natilon.

Its use in cordage is well documented and apparently dates back to the bronze age! In 2013, archaeologists tested fibres from a 2,800 year old burial site in Denmark. They found that the fine cloth wrapping the cremated remains was woven from nettle fibres, not cultivated flax or hemp as expected. Even more interestingly, the fibres were imported from a region that is now in Austria, showing that nettle textiles were valued enough to be traded long-distance.

There almost is a famous fairytale, "The Wild Swans", written by Hans Christian Anderson about a girl who had to weave eleven shirts made from nettle to save her brothers who were under a spell that had turned them into swans.

In "Women who run with the wolves", Clarissa Pinkola Estés explores the psychological representations in this story. The nettle's sting represents the suffering and sacrifice needed for deep transformation, both for oneself and for others.

I recently heard about a film called "The Nettle Dress", which follows a man's journey of weaving fabric out of nettle following his wife's death - which explores the themes of endurance, suffering and healing. I've not yet seen this film but I want to.

A final note is that during WW1, the German Army ran out of cotton so started using nettle to make the soldier's uniforms. The idea of nettle going to war is quite a poignant one... it's a reminder that nature may have its sting but the pain we inflict on each other - in large - far outweighs this.

Concluding thoughts

Nettle is a great plant for those who want to start reconnecting with the earth - and getting to know it can be deeply nourishing both for the body and for the soul. Its role as fibre is also fascinating as it can be woven not only fibre but also the threads of our imagination, helping our stories and understanding of self to grow. In Celtic mythology, an old crone is often depicted as weaving the world into existence … I wonder if she was using nettle fibre to do this?

If this post has inspired you to get to know nettle, let me know - I'd love to hear your experiences!

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