NETTLE: the stinging friend of butterflies

JOLTING the unwary with its painful sting, the common nettle is one of our most unpopular weeds so it may come as a surprise that wildlife experts have been singing its praises.

Perhaps it passed you by but 'National Be Nice to Nettles Week' saw plants you thought were just unlovely hazards of the garden or field become environmental heroes.

You might wonder what the world is coming to when you can no longer duff up a few nettles with a clear conscience but there was a good point to be made.

Naturalist Chris Baines, a supporter of the drive to put nettles in a better light, explained: "Stingers are a vital part of growing up, giving us one of the most painful early memories of close contact with nature.

"It is much later in life that most of us realise just how valuable they are, especially for some of our most beautiful wild creatures.

"Without stinging nettles, peacock, small tortoiseshell and red admiral butterflies would have nowhere to lay their eggs, so do please find a space for nettles somewhere in your neighbourhood."

Nettle fans won some prestigious backing after Buckingham Palace head gardener Mark Lane got involved in the campaign.

"Within the Palace gardens, nettles play an important role in wildife habitat areas as they provide a valuable food source for caterpillars," he said.

The common nettle (Urtica dioica) can grow up to a metre high with its jagged edged leaves and stem armed with ranks of tiny stinging hairs primed to repel any threat.

Each hair is hollow, filled with an acid-like stinging liquid and tipped with a tiny gland which reacts to touch.

In this country nettle stings remain painful for just a few minutes but the sting of an Australian species is so severe that it occasionally kills.

Like its leaves, nettle flowers are also green and dangle beside the stem with male and female flowers located on different plants.

In times past, nettles were dried and turned into hay for livestock with nettle seeds commonly mixed into horse feed to produce a sleeker coat.

But humans have benefited, too.

Nettles were once routinely added to soups and stews to provide extra nutrition and still pop up occasionally in today's recipes.

A Northumberland company currently offers a "gouda style, creamy and smooth" nettle cheese which exploits the nettle's unique flavour as well as its nutritional value.

I myself tried a pint of nettle beer at a country show once - okay but nothing to shout about.

I tried a couple more pints just to confirm my first impression and decided I quite liked it...but by then, I quite liked everything.

According to organisers of 'National Be Nice to Nettles Week', 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys was known to eat "nettle porridge", which he found delicious.

Cooked nettles lose their ability to sting but some people believe there is an easy way to avoid the uncooked nettle's sting.

This belief is even summarised in rhyme by 18th century writer Aaron Hill: "Tender-handed stroke a nettle, and it stings you for your pains. Grasp it like a man of mettle, and it soft as silk remains."

I took his advice and experimented.

Ouch! Ow! I am obviously not a man of mettle. Try testing his theory yourself - if you dare.