Perennial herb mostly 20-80 cm tall, erect, few if any branches, densely hairy. Leaves mostly 3-10 cm long, more or less lanceolate to elliptic, long-pointed. Leaf stalk long and slender. Bracts shorter than the perianth, free. Perianth segments white. Fruit shiny black achenes.
Mediterranean
Occasionally grown as a herb or medicinal plant and used as a laxative and for urinary problems.
P. judaica L. from SW and WC Europe is a weed of rocky areas, walls and wasteland of all southern states except Tasmania, noxious in NSW, spread by seed. The pollen can cause allergic rhinitis and irritate asthma and conjunctivitis. It differs from P. officinalis in being a generally smaller plant, rarely more than 40 cm tall with leaves to 5 cm long and bracts shortly fused at the base.
Source: (1997). Urticaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 2. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 1. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
