Classical Latin name for the nettle.
Annual or perennial herbs, mostly with stinging hairs. Stems ridged or 4-angled. Leaves opposite, toothed; stipules free. Sexes on the same or different plants. Flowers in axillary clusters, unisexual, green, inconspicuous. Perianth of 4 lobes, unequal in the female flower. Fruit a glossy, flattened achene.
Generally encountered as weeds. The stinging hairs contain a painful histamine.
U. dioica L., the European Stinging Nettle, is a rhizomatous perennial with the sexes on different plants, it is known in Victoria only from a single specimen collected at Essendon. U. urens L. from temperate Asia and N Africa is a widespread Australian weed which is an annual without rhizomatous roots and both sexes in the same flower cluster. U. incisa Poir. is an Australian native nettle with narrow-lanceolate to linear leaves and the sexes in separate clusters on the same plant.
Division and seed.
Occasionally grown as a herbal or medicinal curiosity, the cooked tips eaten like cabbage; some species are the source of fibre.
About 80 species from both hemispheres but mostly northern temperate (in Australia 1 native species and 2 species naturalised).
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.
