The joy of The nettles!
Longside our house on Exmoor there’s a small field that’s so steep the locals used to call it ‘the cliff’. A new report gives them a stinging verdict. But here a nature writer says they’re an ancient remedy, a host to magical wildlife — and argues we shou
ABecause no one’s ever been daft enough to venture on it with a tractor, it’s never been plastered with nitrate fertiliser like most of the fields round here.
As a result, our village is treated to a stunning display of wildflowers each summer. They include meadow buttercups, honeys-cented lady’s bedstraw, salad burnet with its rust-speckled flowers and the yellow and orange bird’s-foot trefoil, a member of the pea family and known around here as eggs-and-bacon.
These and a dozen others appear on cue each summer, splashing their vivid hues across the green canvas in a glorious melee of colour. Except for the nettles patches, that is. In half a dozen or so places across the field, these tall, fearsome warriors of the pasture rule with an iron fist.
They appear from nowhere each spring, grow at a furious rate, and smother any other plant that dares to put a leaf or tendril above the parapet.
Not long after we moved here, I did a little research on the history of our small field. I discovered that back in the Sixties, the farmer looked after outdoor chickens on it. For a few years there were half a dozen small hen-houses spread across the pasture. This is where the chickens deposited most of their nutrient-rich droppings.
And today, more than 40 years after the hens were removed, the super-fertile sites they left behind have become the pocketempires of the stinging nettle.
It seems that across Britain nettles occupying nutrient- enriched soils are becoming a threat to many of our best loved wildflower species.
According to a report from the charity Plantlife the countryside is being overrun by nettles and hogweed because of the nitrogen compounds being pumped out by diesel engines and industry.
More than a third of flowering plants fail to thrive in nitrogen enriched soil, says the report, leaving them vulnerable to drought, frost and disease. Delicate
flowers such as bird’sfoot trefoil and the blue harebell are especially at risk. By contrast, ‘thuggish’ species like nettles are taking over. Pumped up by the rocket-fuel we’ve created, they’ve become the new bullies of our meadowlands.
I can’t help wondering if the argument isn’t being a little overdone.
Believe me, I’m the last one to under-play the anti-social characteristics of Urtica dio
ica. To this day, I retain a painful memory of falling shirtless as a seven-year-old into a nettle patch near my home.
There followed an excruciating and largely sleepless night.
Yet today, I wouldn’t be without my nettle patches. Nor would our small flock of Exmoor sheep.
Because the field is too steep for haymaking, we rely on the sheep to graze the pasture and stop it reverting to scrub. On their richlyvaried rations our half-dozen ewes have become remarkably ancient. Although they’ve long since retired from lambing duties, they remain active. I can’t remember the last time we had to call out the vet.
Their robust good health I attribute partly to the fact that at certain times of the year they tuck into the nettles with great gusto.
I’m always surprised the sting doesn’t put the sheep off. After all, its complex mix of chemicals — including acids and histamine injected into the body by those tiny silica hairs which break and act like a hypodermic needle when you brush against them — is there for the very purpose of deterring herbivores.
Perhaps my Exmoors’ palates are less sensitive. Or they’ll put up with a little pain in return for health benefits.
Because as well as being one of nature’s richest protein sources, nettles are known to have antiinflammatory properties.
Grazing animals seem to know exactly when they’re in need of a dose of nettle tonic. There was a time when human beings knew it, too. The 17th- century physician Sir John Harington prescribed nettle tonic for a variety of ailments including sleeplessness, stomach upsets and gout.
If your belly by the Collicke paine endures,
Against the Collicke Nettle-seed and honey is Physick.
I have a woman farmer friend — now retired — who brought up seven children in the Sixties and Seventies on a very meagre income. But for regular additions of nettle soup and steamed nettle leaves to the kitchen menu — the sting goes as soon as you cook them — the family might well have gone hungry and under-nourished on a number of occasions, she recalls.
In his wartime cookbook Kitchen Front Recipes And Hints, Ambrose Heath wrote that a poached egg on a bed of pureed nettle leaves, covered with cheese sauce, was an almost perfect meal, containing ‘ body- building, protective and energising’ foods.
Nettles have even been used to make fibres for cloth. In the early 19th century, the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell wrote of sleeping in nettle sheets and dining off a nettle table cloth. This is perhaps why nettles have long been known as both friend and enemy.
But for me, the chief value of the much-reviled nettle patch is the benefits it brings to wildlife, particularly butterflies. While ‘thuggish’ nettles may appear to dominate the wildflower meadow, they are also essential food plants for the larvae of some of our most beautiful butterflies.
That summer favourite, the Peacock, is best known for the unmistakeable ‘eyespots’ on its wings, a defence against bird or rodent predators. Emerging from hibernation in spring, the male takes up a good vantage point somewhere near a sunny nettle patch. Unmated females passing by can expect to be hounded.
After mating, the female chooses the tip of a nettle plant in full sun to lay up to 200 eggs.
Ten days later, they hatch and the black, spiny caterpillars feed en masse in silken tents on top of the nettles. Those that escape being eaten by spiders or parasitised by wasps leave the nettles to pupate.
Another nettle- dependent butterfly is the red admiral with its familiar red and white markings on the upper side of the wings. Unlike the peacock, the red admiral is a seasonal migrant, but when conditions are right adults start to arrive in Britain as early as March.
The eggs are laid singly on the upper leaves of nettles, usually in the middle of large patches.
After a week, the larva emerges and immediately folds a leaf together to make a tent, securing the edges with silk. Within this structure the young caterpillar finds itself in relative safety. As it grows, it makes new tents, each bigger than the one before. WHEN
fully grown, the caterpillar chews part way through the nettle stem causing it to fall over. It then spins together several downward pointing leaves to create a shelter in which to pupate. After 12 days, the adult emerges from the chrysalis, which is patterned with metallic gold spots.
It’s amazing to think of the untidy and unloved nettle patch being the venue for such extraordinary events. Yet the insects — nettles support more than 40 species — that add such enchantment and colour to our summer gardens owe their very existence to this ancient friend and foe.
They provide a haven for overwintering aphids which are drawn to fresh growth in the spring and provide an early source of food for ladybirds as well as blue tits and other woodland birds agile enough to dart around the stems.
And later on, in the summer, those copious strings of seeds on the plant provide plenty of nourishment for seed-eating birds.
This is why I wouldn’t dream of taking a strimmer to our nettle patches (although they’re highly compostable if you do, and by leaving them to ferment in water, you can create a liquid fertiliser).
That isn’t to say it’s a great idea to go on polluting our soils with nitrogen compounds — or the phosphates which nettles also need. No one wants to see our gardens and fields covered in them.
But as I have discovered, they don’t venture far from their fertile hotspots. So long as we limit the pollution, they can be guaranteed not to go marching across the countryside like an invading army.
Now, as we enjoy a burst of March sunshine, I notice that already the young nettles in our field are looking green and leafy. Just right for an early bowl or two of nettle soup I’d say (remember to pick them wearing gloves — dock leaves won’t help much, as experts say their effect is only that of a placebo).
But I’ll be sure to leave plenty for the red admirals when they arrive.