To judge from the condition of much of my garden, the season of the stinging nettle has come again. We tend to malign the nettle as being uncomfortable at close quarters, yet it has tremendous cultural significance and not a little economic value. We apply the name to a rash produced by an irritant. And if we examine the names of ancient villages throughout our countryside, we find a surprising number with nettle either as a prefix or a suffix. This, presumably, denotes an unusually noticeable growth of the plant in the vicinity, somewhere in the misty past.
Any fertile, muddy, disturbed land in river valleys and woodland glades is a favourite nettle habitat. The plant originally thrived in woodlands, but with the spread of cultivation extended its range. A high concentration of nitrates and phosphates encourages its growth, and indeed prominent clumps of nettles are good indicators of former villages, now deserted. Ruined crofts in the Scottish highlands, however remote, present their nettle patches, and Romano-British settlements on the Wiltshire downs still distinguish themselves by masses of nettles that persist a millennium and a half after their human occupants have disappeared into legend.
As food, young nettle shoots have been valued since prehistoric times, and rival the more celebrated spinach for their mineral content. The Romans enjoyed them boiled, and the folk of the Celtic fringe made them into a thick soup with oatmeal. They may be incorporated into a cheese sauce or deep-fried until crisp. Nettle beer is a tasty beverage.
Nettles are ideal composting material, with a high nitrogen content. Even when merely covered with water in a bin, nettle leaves make an excellent liquid fertiliser for the horticulturist.
They may also be soaked to make a green dyestuff, or rotted down and their tough fibres woven into fabrics. Nettle cloth was made in Scotland until the 18th century, and used in tablecloths and bedsheets. A Danish grave of late Bronze Age date was found to contain cremated bones wrapped in nettle fabric. It was probably the advent of flax that led to the phasing out of nettle fabrics.
Nettles play an essential role in the conservation of many different types of insect. They are particularly valuable for butterflies and are the main source of food for the caterpillars of peacock, comma, small tortoiseshell and red admiral.
Indeed, butterflies use nettles throughout the summer. To encourage them, a garden nettle patch should be cultivated in a warm, sunny, sheltered situation, and preferably cut short in June in order to provide new growth for the deposition of eggs late in the season. From March and early April the small tortoiseshell is depositing eggs, followed in May by the peacock and in July the comma and red admiral. Several species of moth also make use of the nettle bed in their due season.