The Little Wild Library: Nettle: Simple things to do with the plants around you - Hardcover

Gogerty, Clare

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1446315401 ISBN 13: 9781446315408

Publisher: Verbena, 2025

Synopsis

In The Little Wild Library: Nettle, discover how to make the most of this tenacious plant, with recipes and makes to try throughout the year. Bursting to life in spring and popping up everywhere, the nettle is one of the most common plants, though sometimes cruelly called weeds!

Once you’ve found your favourite patch of nettles, come back as the seasons change and find new things to do with your foraged treasure...

• Learn how to identify and how to safely forage for nettles.
• Discover easy recipes that make use of fresh and sweet nettle tips that appear in spring.
• All the recipes and makes are beginner friendly!

Learn how to identify the nettle amidst its hedgerow friends from the comprehensive botanical information included, and take this pocket-sized book out on foraging adventures to help spot the urtica dioica waving merrily on a spring breeze, or brightening a dull fall afternoon. Through the book, learn all about the nettle including how it got its name, and discover some of the myths, legends, and folklore attached to this fantastic plant.

The perfect beginner's guide to foraging, in a handy pocket-sized format, The Little Wild Library: Nettle will reveal the secrets of this magical weed and inspire those new to foraging to experiment and explore the beautiful plants around them.

About this title

About the Author

Clare lives on a smallholding in deepest Herefordshire which she is opening as a spiritual retreat in 2023. The sound of shamanic drumming often comes from her orchard, and herbal remedies are frequently cooked up in the kitchen. She has been interested in magic, druidry and folklore since a child, encouraged by her father, an enthusiastic dowser and leyline hunter. A former magazine editor, she is now a freelance journalist and author, writing about spirituality, travel, homes and gardens.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

For too long, nettles have been regarded as the enemy. A plant to be at best avoided and at worst dug up and discarded. This is unsurprising – anyone who has brushed against a nettle has felt its burning sting. The fine hairs that line the leaves are mini hypodermic needles ready to inject anyone foolish enough to approach ungloved or bare-legged. As Elizabethan physician John Gerard noted in his book Gerard’s Herball published in 1597: 'A light touch only causes a great burning, and raiseth hard knots in the skin like blisters, sometimes making it red.'

Those itchy red bumps could be seen as a sign to keep away but that would be a mistake – the dismissal of one of nature’s most successful plants is short-sighted. Packed with vitamins and minerals, nettle is one of the most nutritiously complete foods – it is extremely good for you, better even than the much-acclaimed kale.

Nettles are also one of the most recognisable wild plants, probably the first a child can identify – that early sting on bare legs lingers in the memory. And they are widespread, found in profusion across the temperate world. Unlike many wild plants, the tender green leaves of this perennial plant, which emerge in spring, are abundant. They can be harvested with relative abandon, the forager safe in the knowledge that plenty remain, and that any shortfall will be soon replaced.

This abundance is due to the nettle’s incredible powers of survival and propagation. The sting that causes our skin to rise in itchy bumps keeps herbivores at bay. Many a sheep-grazed field that has been nibbled clear of all other vegetation still has a patch of nettles rising proudly in a corner. The nettle’s underground network of yellow rhizomes quickly colonises areas of nitrogen-rich soil, which is why a patch is frequently found at the bottom of gardens and other places of human habitation. Archaeologists love it for that reason. Long after all evidence of human habitation has disappeared, the nettle is an indicator that there was once a settlement in that place.

The word ‘nettle’ is traced to an Old English word netel and has become a synonym for being annoyed. The persistent itch of the sting is likened to persistent irritation. The descriptive Latin name Urtica comes from the word urere meaning ‘to burn’, another reference to its most notable characteristic. Dioica is Latin for ‘two houses’, and refers to the plant being dioecious – bearing male and female flowers on separate plants.

It’s reassuring to know that this most generous of plants is freely available and it is unlikely to appear on any endangered list any time soon. All you need to harvest nettle’s many benefits are a pair of long trousers, a good pair of gloves (preferably up to the elbow), and an open mind. And if the sting bothers you, it’s worth remembering that the subsequent rash may be uncomfortable, but it is temporary and not dangerous and will soon be forgotten. Some people even swear it’s good for you…

Edition details

• Publisher: Verbena
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1446315401
• ISBN 13: 9781446315408
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 112