“When Milarepa had finished his training with Marpa, he roamed the land in search of a suitable place for meditation. Along the way farmers fed him with grains and cereals. Later, his sister Peta offered him bread, butter, and wine. In the years between, he meditated in White Rock Cave, where there was a stream with good water and a patch of stinging nettles. From the nettle Milarepa made cloth to cover his body, and flour for inner nourishment. Eventually his skin took on the color of nettle, and even the hairs on his head became bristly and green.” Source
Of all of the plants that I have ever encountered in my entire life, Stinging Nettle will always be my favorite. As a child I would often run through the woods behind my house and sting myself with the plants and give my best attempt at curing the sting with other plants juices. Despite that being quite idiotic, I made it out without ever having a bad rash. When I think back to my childhood I have no idea what made me so drawn to that plant. Stinging Nettle is perhaps one of the most nutritious greens on this planet. Perhaps the draw to this plant was an unconscious desire to meet more nutritional needs. Maybe it was a spiritual connection? Or maybe it was just happenstance for a weird kid with a high tolerance for pain.
This plant remained my favorite all the way through childhood and beyond, and while other kids would freak out and avoid the sting at all costs I gladly trudged through gigantic patches of this wonderful species. Even to this day I do not shy away from a good sting. We harvest absolute mountains of Nettle tops each spring for food and I have never once in my life worn gloves during the harvest. Nowadays the sting is like an old friend. It is a way that the plant can make you aware of its presence even in the complete absence of any other sense.
Upon reaching adulthood my interest for the outdoors waned for a few years as I obsessed with politics, girls and rollerblading. As odd as it may sound, what led me back to the forests in search of plants began with dumpster diving. As a young man on a mission to live life outside of the mainstream I got rid of my car, ate food out of dumpsters and started growing a garden. Being handed a pamphlet on two wild edibles in the Metro Detroit area (I lived there at this point) changed my life forever. This quest for free food became an absolute obsession of mine and that quest led me right back to my old friend: Stinging Nettle.
The Nettle family is large, and extremely widespread around the world. Including 2625 separate species and 53 genera. “Stinging Nettle” I have come to learn is not the singular species I thought it was, but rather 6 separate species or subspecies depending on who you are talking to. I refer to these as different species because to me they seem to have spent enough time apart that some of them behave differently or have evolved different traits. If you want to refer to them as subspecies that is entirely up to you.
Nettle often emerges in the spring looking purple, due to a naturally occurring plant “anti-freeze”.
These six species range all over the world, from North America to Europe, Asia and Africa. It was once thought that Stinging Nettle was an introduced and aggressive invasive species in North America, but thanks to the work of geneticists we can be certain that indeed this plant is a native species. Still to this day however, it is a popular myth to spread that this species is an exotic invader. I believe that the reasoning for this claim comes from the discomfort the species can cause and as such people think discomfort must belong somewhere else.
In addition to the work of geneticists, we also have the ethnobotanical knowledge amassed by Daniel E. Moerman in his book “Native American Ethnobotany” which holds no less than three and a half pages of uses by the Natives all over North America. If this species were truly adventive then the entry would look more like it does for Wild Parsnip which is only 2 paragraphs long.
The Stinging Nettle you will most likely find here in Michigan is the “Slender Nettle” or Urtica gracilis. I have spent years of my life telling people that this species here in Michigan is called Urtica dioica and that it is the same species as the European and Asian counterparts. I was wrong. Looking back at this now, it should have seemed obvious as I always wondered why our leaves here were so long and slender in comparison to the images that come up when you google search dioica. Hindsight is 20/20 after all, as they say.
This is not to say that one cannot find dioica here on the landscape, because you definitely can. However most botanists and taxonomists agree that the majority of our Nettle in Michigan is our native variety. Stinging Nettle of either clan is edible, delicious, nutritious and a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals that puts most other “superfoods” to shame. It is the liver of the plant world. One gains a noticeable feeling of health and wellness after eating. The same feeling that liver gives most. It is akin to taking a potent multivitamin.
Dreams of this species emergence in the spring causes many a salivary gland to start production in this household during cold, fresh-green-less winters. Once these plants pop, all bets are off for at least a month as most days we consume at least one sizable portion of this spring tonic. We put them in quiches, soups, fried in bacon grease, in smoothies, and as a quick saute for eating as a nutritious side dish. This style of eating is very seasonal and is representative of how our ancestors all over the globe would have eaten.
Eating foods with the seasons has the downside of having to wait nearly a year to taste a food you love again, but it is an extremely healthy and variable way to fulfill your daily food requirements. Much like the cherry blossoms that we appreciate for their brevity, Stinging Nettle becomes something to cherish with intention for as long as you possibly can, and then let go. The ephemeral nature of this plant in its edible stage is what is so alluring. Much like the fiddleheads and wild leeks that grace many a fancy restaurants menu.
To find this plant keep in mind one simple principle: rich soil. I often jokingly refer to the soil in which one finds this plant as being the “Gated community of soils”. Stinging Nettle stubbornly refuses to grow in anything but the most fantastically nutrient rich soil. In my town in northern Michigan the soil is incredibly sandy, which means that Stinging Nettle can only be found in and adjacent to wetlands where the soil quality is not pure sand. In southern Michigan one has a greater ability to find this species outside of the range of wetlands, but you will still often encounter this plant in the proximity of a water source. Think riversides and floodplains. Plant cohorts often include Jerusalem artichoke, Willows, Hopniss, Goldenrods, Jewelweed, Red Maples and many more.
Harvesting Nettle tops can include scissors and gloves, but we prefer to pinch the tops off bare handed. The part harvested for foods sake is the tender “meristematic” growth. A meristem is a rapidly growing portion of any plant. When you eat Asparagus you are eating meristematic growth. Typically you have one to one and a half months for harvest these Nettle tops. This depends on whether or not you have variable patches that emerge at different times in the season. I have over the years grown a list of spots that include some places that emerge a full three weeks before other spots. Keeping this variability in mind we can stagger out our harvest for a lot longer than if we only harvested from one small patch.
As with most of the plants that I love most, this species can handle herbivory like a true champ. Pinching off Nettle tops barely sets this species back. One can pick off 100% of the tops in any given patch and do no real damage, as the plant will continue to grow unimpeded. The wilds are filled with species like this one that offer us a real excellent replacement to commercially grown species such as Spinach.
Stinging Nettle boasts an impressive repertoire of nutrients, vitamins and minerals. Including but not limited to:
Vitamin A
Vitamin C (tiny amounts)
B vitamins
Vitamin K
Calcium
iron
All essential amino acids
Fatty acids
Magnesium
Phosphorus
Potassium
Carotenoids
This beautiful specimen packs a serious nutritional punch.
In addition to what is mentioned above, Stinging Nettle also contains an impressive amount of phenolic compounds, that while not essential to living can provide health protective effects through consumption. Even more impressive is that scientific tests on cooking this plant show that even through cooking, vitamin and mineral content are still very high, making this food an easy to procure, and easy way for people with less monetary resources to still attain high levels of nutrition. source
Our yearly approach to this plant moves from gorging ourselves on the fresh Nettle tops to then shifting focus to drying enough leaves for a years supply of Nettle tea. In addition to a home supply we also sell a popular blend of tea made from wild harvested Stinging Nettle and wild Peppermint that you can find here. Nettle tea is known to have a big medicinal repertoire when consumed regularly. If you know me at all, you’d know that I am not a fan of hippy dippy claims about the medicinal aspects of wild plants. I am a fan of scientifically validated findings about medicinal plants. Luckily for us, there is a goodly amount of evidence that Stinging Nettle is great for those with type 2 diabetes, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis, Allergic Rhinitis and Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia.
On a more personal level I have a young daughter with a long list of allergens that make her life more difficult than it should be and as such she takes a daily pill with “Freeze dried Nettle tops” as one of the main ingredients to keep her feeling healthier. Before we discovered this remedy our days were typically spent repeatedly wiping the snot from her nose and she breathed from her mouth constantly, which is known to cause a host of ill health related maladies.
Because this plant has been a favorite of mine from the days of my youth, when given the opportunity to supply a name for my son, we named him Nettle. My first daughter was given the name of Willow and it could not make more sense as Nettle and Willow are companion plants. Typically where there is Nettle there is Willow nearby.
This spring if you haven’t gone out and picked Stinging Nettle greens to add to your diet, I encourage you to do so right now. This plant is a true superfood, and it is one that you do not need to spend money on. I drone on and on in my daily life about sustainability and the ways in which humanity can improve its relationship with local foods, and this species is at the top of that list. It is a perennial that requires absolutely no inputs from us besides the occasional tree cutting to keep it out of the shade. There are thousands of articles about the horrendous effects of annual agriculture on our soils and I will not go into that here, but just know that eating less conventionally grown greens and adding more sustainable greens like this species to your diet is doing a service to the Earth.
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