It’s a feeling from childhood summers: a sickly, prickling spreading beneath the knee that sets hairs on end all over my body. It’s painful, in that severe but temporary way, like a mild electric shock. The sort of pain that makes you suddenly wary.
In the woods, a cooler month has been caught by a surge of warmth – and beneath a canopy on the cusp of change, everything briefly thickens: the smells, the air, the green of the understorey. The nettles are everywhere, great armies of them, in identical ranks, anonymity in ubiquity. So numerous, they aren’t really noticed. Until you’re stung. Given the number, they are probably the most hazardous thing in the countryside.
I bend down and examine my assailant. Somehow it has managed to sting me through my trousers: odd for something with such a frail, fur-like weaponry. The stings are on the stem and hairs underneath: each with a poison sac at its base. So brittle are they, they break off with a sideways brush, leaving a ragged edge sharp enough to pierce skin. Then poison you with formic acid. The body rounds out the discomfort with histamine.
I wonder, is domination of the nettle linked to its peculiar protection-oriented potency? Overpopulation due to over-effective defence? Perhaps it’s fear of persecution from us. Boil the sting away and they’re nettle tea, nettle beer, pesto, soup, medicine. Even clothing, once: the Germans wore nettle-spun uniforms during the second world war. Ranks of a different sort.
I couldn’t have nettle anything. The thought of any of it gives me goosebumps, a kind of Pavlovian pain association. But, somehow, it has been years since I’ve been stung.
Another echo of childhood, my reflex is to look for a dock leaf. A kind of partner piece to the nettle, fond of similar environments. Placid and plate-like, an antithesis to the nettle’s malignant serrations. A folkloric cure, probably a placebo, but welcome. According to an old teacher of mine, you could always find one because nature likes to provide answers to the problems it creates.
At least, use them well. Nettles shelter ladybirds, feed butterflies and deter predators from other plants. Seems it’s just we humans that need to learn.
