Root branching and creeping, lough, yellowish, jointed, and 
sending down, from the joints, many fibrous radicles. Stems many, 
from two to four feet high, upright, very little branched, bluntly 
4-cornered, furrowed, purplish. Leaves large, opposite, on slender 
petioles, heart-shaped, pointed, strongly serrated, veiny, dull green, 
clothed, like the stems, with stinging bristly hairs Stipulas egg- 
shaped, upright. Clusters in pairs, much branched, many-flowered, 
Flowers on one root, chiefly sterile; on another mostly fertile. 
Calyx of the latter occasionally with 2, or more, supernumerary 
leaves. Seeds egg-shaped, compressed, whitish, shining. 
This plant is a native all over Europe ; in Barbary, Siberia, and Japan. It is 
observed by Dr. Johnston, in his excellent and very interesting work, the Flora 
of Berwick-upon- Tweed, that “ the Nettle is always found near the abodes of 
man. Wherever he has sojourned, it is said to have accompanied him ; and it 
remains to take possession of his deserted dwellings, so that its presence has be- 
come associated with the ideas of ruin and desolation. ‘ I went by the field of the 
slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding ; and, lo, it was all 
gro.wn over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone 
wall thereof was broken down.’ ” 
In Scotland, Poland, and Germany, the young tops of the Nettle are gathered 
early in the Spring as a pot-herb for soups, or for dishes like spinach ; and their 
peculiar flavour is by many much esteemed. Of late it has been recommended for 
forcing, for which it is well adapted. (See Mr. Loudon’s Ency. of Gardening.) 
The roots boiled with alum will dye yarn of a yellow colour. Eggs are thus 
stained yellow preparatory to the feast of Easter by the religious of the Greek 
church. With the juice of the herb woollen stuffs may be dyed a beautiful and 
permanent green. The plant formerly was used as an astringent, but is now dis- 
regarded. A leaf put upon the tongue and pressed against the roof of the mouth, 
is said to be efficacious in stopping a bleeding at the nose ; and we are told, that 
paralytic limbs have been recovered by stinging them with nettles. The fibrous 
texture of the stem has been manufactured into cloth ; and it appears from some 
experiments made in Ireland, that the thread, in colour, strength, and fineness, is 
equal to that obtained from flax. In Siberia and the northern parts of Europe, 
cords, cloths, and even paper, are made from this plant. A decoction of Nettles 
strongly salted, (a quart of salt to 3 pints of the decoction,) it is said, will coagulate 
milk readily, without giving it any unpleasant flavour. The stings are very curi- 
ous microscopic objects ; they consist of an exceedingly fine pointed, tapering, 
hollow bristle, perforated at the extremity, and seated on a glandular mass of cellu- 
lar tissue, which secrets the poison (see fig. 10). When the hand is gently pressed 
against them, the delicate point penetrates some pore of the skin, at the same time 
the bristle is forced against the gland at its base, and the poison rises into the tube 
in a manner strictly analogous to that by which a discharge of venom is effected 
from the fangs of a serpent’s tooth, and the caustic fluid being thus introduced into 
the wound made by the point of the sting, produces the painful sensations familiar 
to all who have ever handled this plant. The Nettle has ever been stigmatized as 
the emblem of an irritable and waspish temper, but in truth with little justice, for 
when does it prove the aggressor, or engage in active warfare against its neighbour 1 
To how many little creatures does it afford friendly protection and subsistence ; for 
Entomologists assure us, that not less than 30 species of insects are nurtured upon 
the Nettle alone. See Withering' s Bot. Arr. 7th edition. 
JEcidium Urticce, and a species of Erysiplie, are common on the leaves of the 
Nettle in the Summer and Autumn ; and in the Winter and Spring, on the dead 
stems of this plant, will be found Acrospermum compressum, Fusarittm tre- 
melloides, Rhytisma Urticce, Sphccria acuta, Sp. herbarum, and 2 or 3 species 
of Peziza. 
