Kitteh, Sorry, i've been busy.. I also been worried about you.. How you doing? When i was leaving my buddies house, jumping on the highway, the factory bordering the highway let off a big plum of pollution, my car was almost ate by it.. I didn't notice it during daytime, it's the dark sky that contrasts with the white smoke. My mother has artifical hips, knees, and shoulders. She was the first person to have a cement-less hip! The doctors kept her sedated on drugs, she also got sick on them(the new pills have harmful dyes in them, just like the carcinogenic food coloring they use now a days in every processed product).. Anyways, long story short, we were walking through a park, and found stinging nettle(this was when i first started foraging, didn't know too much). So i went and picked some nettle, instantly as soon as i touched it, it stung me, i jumped back like a pansy in shock.. My hand was tingling/numb the whole walk back, it was a strange feeling driving, almost like needles, fiberglass in the hands(it goes away in a few hours, you get used to it, the pain wont last long if you do it regularly). I got home and my hands felt so loose and, well, they just felt good. So the next walk, I took a few inches of top growth, cut that off, hold the stem, and rub softly on my moms neck/back(like Kalia said, you just need a few up and down motions, that will stong you a good dozen times). Ever since then, she swears by it, she says it does better than her pain pill. I was amazed, i thought it would do something(even just numb it temporarily like a bee sting), but the stinging nettle did much more. My mom would much rather take the stinging nettle than get sick on the harmful dyes in our "medicine", or the tylenol in it. Why the hell put fillers in medicine? That's a red flag right there.

desertdance - cooking and drying remove the sting. And you need to gather very young nettles for use as a vegetable. They are very nutritious. You can also spin fibre from them. In the UK we grow up getting stung by nettles as they are all over our countryside but the effects only last a few minutes. Maybe we are desensitised? I've yet to meet anyone who grows them intentionally.

Surprisingly, my place which was a working farm for more than 100 years, had no stinging nettle. Every other introduced herb in the US it seems but not nettle. I planted two plants at the back of an entirely too large for me to even begin to manage perennial border and it is taking a long time for the plants to produce enough material that I could even begin to harvest from them. I think I will this year...7 years after I initially planted them. I did plant only 2 pipsqeek plants originally. So.....place at the back of a garden or another location where you won't be actively weeding or passing by. Stinging nettle is a dioecious species - male and female plants. Only your female plants would produce seeds. Control the seed heads (ie lop off) and you should be able to better control its spread. FataMorgana

"Nettles (Urtica), particularly Stinging Nettle, host Question Marks, Eastern Comma, Satyr Common Milbert's Tortoiseshell (Numphalis milberti) and the Red Admiral." --from link below. Hope they are a native one, as I read it doesn't sting so bad as Urtica dioica (and besides native is always better!). Also has herbal uses if your into that, and is highly nutricious--apparently cooking deactivates the sting! Here is a link that might be useful: Butterfly Host Plants