My plant initiator

Many herbalists, and even the rare biologist, remind us that plants have important things to teach us, even if we aren’t paying attention, but more so if we find within ourselves ways to listen and observe.

Think about it. Plants are all around us. They are alive. We acknowledge that animals communicate. They use their senses to learns things about one another, and they behave in ways that tell things. Why wouldn’t plants communicate? Not only biochemically with one another but—somehow—with us? Just because an animal or plant is not speaking our obvious language does not mean they are not communicating with us, or trying to.

Have you ever had this experience: suddenly a particular plant comes in to focus? You’ve walked by it numerous times or lived with it for years. Many seasons of its existence. You never noticed it before, or you never noticed it much. Now for some reason you see it. Something clicks. You somehow even know something about that plant that you didn’t know before.

This happened to me with nettle.

Three years ago, I started walking the 40-acre land that we now live on. This land is predominantly old fields. Old dairy pastures. I didn’t know much about the make up of grasses in old fields. Just liked the way they looked.

The farmer who had been mowing our fields for hay set me straight on this topic. He pointed out several fields on our land that he likes because of their better quality of grasses.

One of them, the field directly behind the long, old milking barn, has nettle growing in it. Stinging nettle. Urtica dioica. Three years ago that nettle was zealously edging the field, easily visible from the shale pathway that snakes through the entire land. I was there, too, walking, wandering and thinking. And then I noticed the pointy oval leaves of a knee-high plant. It looked slightly ominous and interesting at the same time—like mint on steroids. I kneeled down to look. After I noticed the one, I realized the field was full of them.

I have no experience with nettle. Though I grew up in a rural place, the only plants we ate were cultivated vegetables from our garden or produce from nearby farm stands or, in the winter months, from the grocery store. But somehow I knew in that instant that the plant I had noticed, the plant that was growing abundantly in an old cow pasture on land that I was already in love with, was called nettle. And I knew that I should eat some.

I pinched the top of one to take it home and verify that it was, in fact, nettle. Formic acid from the hairs of the plant—remarkable in their similarity to hypodermic needles—burned into my fingertips. I “remembered” in my primordial brain that nettle could sting. It surprised me but then the sting wasn’t so bad. Over the few hours that I felt it, I liked the way it made the surface of my fingers tingle and then go numb.

Since then, I’ve harvested nettle from this field for cooking, wearing gardening gloves and a long sleeved shirt while I clip the tops of non-flowering plants into a basket. After a thorough rinse in the sink, they’re good sauteed, and the sting disappears as soon as they begin cooking. I often don’t wear kitchen gloves when I rinse and cut them or remove the leaves. But my fingers end up stung. I don’t recommend this, unless you like a little pain. If you can handle it, it is thought to be good for arthritic joints and stiff muscles.

This year, I’m cutting nettle not only for pesto, soup and sauteed with pasta, but also for drying for tea and infusions. I might even freeze a few bags of leaves for eating later.

I like the flavor of nettle, but it’s hard to describe. Not quite minty, not quite grassy. That it registers as the taste of “green” in my mind’s palate is perhaps due to its extreme chlorophyll content. Nettle is an incredibly nutritious plant—more or less proven to be helpful for its anti-inflammatory qualities. Arthritis or any rheumatism, eczema, even hay fever can be helped with nettle. (I have spring allergies, and during the past several years, nettle seems to quiet them.)

I do feel more energetic after a week or two of eating nettle or drinking herbal infusions with nettle. Really energetic. Some say this is because nettle is high in iron, and builds blood, and that nettle cleanses metabolic waste in the body, restoring energy.

Nettle attracts pollinators, specifically several species of butterfly. And other plants like it, too. It is known as a good compost for gardens and even a good companion plant, deterring many garden pests and attracting good ones.

When I discovered nettle in our field, it was like a light turned on. I realized that there are so many plants around us that we routinely overlook, but are valuable and have much to teach us. Even if they’re prickly.