Urtica urensLinnaeus
small nettle
Eurasia, North Africa; intro-
duced into other temperate
regions
With the possible exception of dande-
lions, elder and docks, no plants
have featured so extensively in folk
medicine in the British Isles as nettles.
Although there are one or two records
for the more vicious small nettle,
Urtica urens,almost always it
andU.dioicahave not been dis-
criminated and they are accord-
ingly treated here together.
Of a total of 311 localised records,
almost two-thirds (194) are accounted for
by use as a spring tonic to cleanse the blood
of impurities (and thus of boils, pimples,
sores of various kinds and clouded eyes).
‘Three nettles in May keeps all diseases
away’, at least for the rest of the year, was
once a widely quoted rhyme, firmly
believed in. Some of the 76 records for
rashes perhaps really belong in that cate-
gory, too, but no fewer than 60 of these are rep-
resented by the practice of drinking nettle tea
to help clear measles rash, which is apparently
peculiar to Ireland and there largely restricted to
the border counties and the north-western
quadrant.
The two other major uses are as a counter-
irritant for rheumatic complaints (48 records),
which dates back at least to Roman times, and
for colds, coughs and lung trouble (29
records,9 of them for consumption specif-
ically). These exhibit no marked geograph-
ical patterns in their occurrence.
Elms to Docks 85Urtica dioica, common nettle
(Brunfels 1530, p. 151)