Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Hart’s Tongue Fern (Asplenium scolopendrium)

Dear Readers, during a walk along through the lanes of Somerset a few weeks ago I was amazed by how subtropical the hedgerows looked. Everywhere the long, green leaves of hart’s tongue fern were decorating the path, bringing a welcome touch of shiny emerald enthusiasm to the otherwise browning foliage.  A field of snowdrops didn’t go amiss, either.

The hart’s tongue fern is a member of the Asplenium or spleenwort family, a group of over 700 mostly tropical species. This fern is the only UK species with long, strap-like leaves, which become wavy at the edges as the plant grows older – the name ‘hart’s tongue’ refers to their similarity (in shape though not, we hope, in colour) to the tongue of a young red deer stag. The plant likes shallow soil and is often found growing among the roots of trees and bushes, or in cracks in walls. You can also buy it from many garden centres, and a healthy specimen is a most attractive plant, though they do become rather dog-eared in time (as do most of us).

Hart’s tongue fern is a common plant in the UK, especially in the south-west of England which is where I found this colony. It is native plant of the northern hemisphere, but is rare in the US, occurring in isolated populations, with the American subspecies being classified as Endangered (at least until the current government de-lists it along with all the other lifeforms covered by the Endangered Species Act, but that’s another story).

The rare American hart’s tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium v. americanum) Photo One (see credit below)

Why spleenwort, though? Well, as we remember from our discussion of the male fern a few weeks ago, ferns do not produce seeds, or indeed flowers, but instead produce spores. Those of the hart’s tongue fern are very distinctive, producing rows of chocolate-coloured spores on the underside of the leaves, which are shed between August and March. In the photo below, the spores have already gone, but the marks of the sporangia that would have contained them are very clear. The whole ensemble puts me in mind of those lime-flavoured sweets with chocolate filling that I used to munch as a child, but maybe I’m just sugar-deprived. Anyhow, the shape of the sporangia reminded medieval peoples of the shape of the spleen, which indicated to them that the plant was good for treating ailments of this organ via the Doctrine of Signatures (already discussed several times, such as in this piece on nipplewort)

Apparently the lines of dark brown reminded whoever named the plant of a centipede, as scolopendrium is the Latin name of this invertebrate.

The empty sporangia of the hart’s tongue fern.

According to A Modern Herbal, hart’s tongue fern is useful for liver diseases of all kinds, and for hardness and stoppings of the spleen. The herbalist Culpepper mentions that

‘The distilled water is very good against the passion of the heart, to stay hiccough, to help the falling of the palate and to stay bleeding of the gums by gargling with it’.

Many years before Culpepper, Galen gave it in infusion for dysentery and diarrhoea, and in country areas in the UK it was used in an ointment for burns and scalds.

One rather lovely story about hart’s tongue fern explains one of its alternative names, godshaer. The story tells that, during his wanderings, Jesus become tired, and lay down beside a stream, resting his head on a pillow of hart’s tongue fern. When, refreshed, he awoke and moved on, he left two of his hairs embedded in the plant and, if you break the stipe (the rib in the middle of the leaf) you will find two black ‘hairs’ (actually vascular bundles). If only I had known this story when I was in Somerset I would have given this a go, so feel free to investigate if you pass a plant in your travels (though do apologise to the poor fern first).

The Ainu people of Japan mix hart’s tongue fern with tobacco and smoke it. And the physicians of Myddfai in Wales recommended it particularly for women:

“If you would always be chaste, eat daily some of the herb called hart’s tongue, and you will never assent to the suggestions of impurity.”

Well, harrumph to that. At my age I need all the suggestions of impurity that I can get. But I digress.

And finally, does anyone eat this plant? In North America, young ferns known as fiddleheads are a great delicacy. However, some ferns contain carcinogens, or substances that cause Vitamin B1 deficiency, so this eating ferns is not an activity for the reckless. However, our old friend Robin over at the Eat Weeds website has gone where the brave fear to tread, and his recipe for Buttered Hart’s Tongue Fiddleheads is here.

When I talked about male fern in a previous Wednesday Weed, I mentioned a craze in Victorian times for collecting ferns, called pteridomania. I am very glad that I wasn’t born during this period, for I imagine that you couldn’t walk around a drawing room without sweeping a glass dome full of ailing ferns off of a side table with your bustle. Furthermore, even if you were working-class there was always some Victorian gentleman artist at his easel,  capturing your slightly grubby, poverty-stricken beauty as you tried to go about your work. So here, for your delectation, is The Fern Gatherer by Charles Sillem Lidderdale (1831- 1895). Is that a tiny hart’s tongue fern grasped in the over-worked hand of this maiden? I do believe it is.

The Fern Gatherer by Charles Sillem Lidderdale (1831 – 1895) (Photo Two – credit below)

Photo Credits

Photo One (American hart’s tongue fern) – By Linda Swartz – http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/images/hartstonguefern/asplenium_scolopendrium_americanum_hab_lg.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12221569

Photo Two (The Fern Gatherer) – By Charles Sillem Lidderdale – Bonhams, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17926598

All other blog content copyright Vivienne Palmer. Free to use and share non-commercially, but please attribute and link back to the blog, thank you.

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Dear Readers, you might think that something as full of poisonous barbs as a stinging nettle would be a most unlikely choice for turning into fabric. But in fact, the plant’s stems are used to produced bast fibre – this is the inner layer of the stem of the plant, and it produces a flexible material suitable for turning into cloth. This is also the part of the flax and hemp plants that are used for fabrics. In stinging nettles, it has the great advantage of not reducing the wearer to a mass of boils.

In this diagram, the area labelled ‘BF’ is the part of the stem that is used for producing textiles (Photo One – credit below)

In order to get to the bast fibre layer, however, the plant has to go through a process called retting (another great new word for my collection). Bundles of nettle stems are submerged in water for between 8 and 14 days, during which time the plant absorbs water, bursting the outer layer and making the bast fibre easy to extract. The time needs to be judged carefully, however: if submerged for too long you end up with an extremely useful but smelly fertiliser, rich in nitrogen, magnesium, iron and sulphur and great for encouraging leafy growth.

Once the fibre has been extracted, the textiles can be created. People have been wearing nettle clothes for at least 2000 years, and why not – the plants grow everywhere with very little encouragement or the use of pesticides, and they make a decent replacement for cotton or linen. Indeed, during the First World War, German uniforms were made from nettles following a cotton shortage.

In Scotland, nettles were used for bed sheets and tablecloths. Sue Eland’s Plantllives website has an extensive section on stinging nettle, and reports how the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) describes the use of the fabric:

‘I have slept in nettle sheets, and dined offa nettle tablecloth, and I have heard my mother say that she thought nettle cloth more durable than any other linen.’

More recently, a number of experiments have been done into the use of nettles for clothing: De Montfort University has created some rather pretty dresses, but my chief question here is how on earth do they stay up? Or on? Clearly they weren’t designed by a woman. But I digress, as usual. There is also a bright pink nettle bikini worn by a lady in boots, but I shall spare you. Enough to say that nettle fabric is due for a comeback, and indeed many companies are already interested in producing it.

Nettle leaves can be used to produce a greenish-yellow dye, and the roots produce a yellow one. Truly this plant is a generous one.

Nettle dresses created by De Montfort University. (Photo Two -credit below)

As you might expect for a plant with such polarising qualities, there is a huge volume of folklore concerning nettles. Stinging nettle was one of the Nine Sacred Herbs of the Anglo-Saxons, which was believed to ward off evil. It was also one of the five bitter herbs that are eaten by Jewish people during the Feast of Passover.

In Yorkshire the plant was used in exorcism ceremonies. Frogs could be kept from beehives (I had no idea that this was a problem) and flies from larders by hanging up a bunch of the plant. A child’s eyesight could be improved if you blew through a leaf into the affected eye. Fever could be cured if a nettle (preferably growing in a shady area) was grasped and uprooted whilst intoning the name of the patient and their parents – a kind of trial by ordeal, where the suffering of the person who went through the ritual was used to benefit the sick person.

The stinging properties of nettles were also used in the treatment of ailments such as rheumatism, the counter-irritant properties of the blisters and the heat produced being seen as a way to alleviate the symptoms.

In Buddhism, the yogi Milarepa reached enlightenment while living in a Himalayan cave and subsisting on a diet of nettle soup, which turned his skin green. At one point he was offered meat, but when he saw that some of it was being consumed by maggots, he understood that it was not fair to deprive the insects of their food, and went back to the nettles. After many trials, he became an influential and revered Buddhist teacher, and if you want to read about his long and eventful life, you can find the full story here.

“Maintain the state of undistractedness and distractions will fly off.
Dwell alone and you shall find a friend.
Take the lowest place and you shall reach the highest.
Hasten slowly and you will soon arrive.
Renounce all worldly goals and you shall reach the highest goal.”

Statue of Milarepa from the Helambu Valley of Nepal (Photo Three – credit below)

And so, our tour of stinging nettles has taken us from an alley in East Finchley to the mountains of the Himalayas. I can think of few plants that have been as useful to us, but also as reviled. For some, the nettle has been food, medicine, clothes and a source of inspiration. For others, it’s a spiteful and pernicious perennial weed, to be rooted out at all costs. F.Scott Fitzgerald once said that ‘The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function‘, and this is often so true of our relationships with the natural world. Stinging nettles sting, but may also treat rheumatism. They love to grow in our gardens, but provide a home for peacock butterflies. No person is perfectly good, or perfectly bad, and yet we still manage to love one another, and it’s the same with the plants and animals that we share our world with. Let us make some room for the nettle, as we hope that others will make room for us, prickly and astringent as we may be.

Photo Credits

Photo One (nettle stem) – By derivative work: Curtis Clark (talk)Labeledstemforposter_copy.jpg: Ryan R. McKenzie – Labeledstemforposter_copy.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4722197

Photo Two (Nettle dress) – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8692782.stm

Photo Three (Milarepa) – By Sarah Lionheart, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2823766

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica)

Dear Readers, last week I looked at the ‘sting’ part of the stinging nettle. However, this is a plant which has been our constant companion for as long as we have lived in these islands, and not surprisingly we have found a myriad ways in which it could help us.

As foraging has been become more popular, so nettle recipes have proliferated. The consensus seems to be that the new tips of the plant should be harvested in March and April, before they set seed and become stringy and unpleasant. In fact, elderly nettles contain gritty particles called ‘cystoliths’ which can irritate the bladder, so refrain from collecting nettles of pensionable age.  No less a luminary than Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a great fan of nettles as food, and you can find the instructions for making nettle soup, nettle spanakopita (though technically a spanakopita made of wild plants is called a horopita) and nettle risotto here.

Stinging nettle papardelle with mixed mushroom ragu, egg and pea shoots (Photo One – credit below)

Indeed, stinging nettles have become such a trendy ingredient that they’re finding their way into everything from pasta to pesto, from borek to polenta. Some of these uses are traditional recipes which are being rediscovered: others are new inventions, using nettles in place of more expensive cultivated greens. And with good reason: as noted last week, nettles are very high in Vitamin A and C, and in minerals such as potassum and manganese. They also contain 25% protein (dry weight) which is high for a leafy vegetable.

Plunging nettles into boiling water neutralises their sting, and makes them edible. However, in Dorset there is an annual World Nettle Eating Competition, held in June when the nettles are at their stingiest. It started when two farmers got into an argument about whose fields had the most nettles, and decided that one way to settle the issue was to eat them. The competitors (and numbers are limited to 65) have to eat the leaves from 24 inch-long stalks of nettle. The bare stalks are measured, and the winner is the person with the longest accumulated length. I can only imagine the state of the participants’ lips and throats. There has been some talk, in recent years, of some shady goings-on, with low toxicity nettle being substituted for the local plant. When The Telegraph covered the event, back in 2009, the winners of the men and women’s competitions (for, to my dismay, I find that women are not immune to this madness) both managed to consume the leaves from 48 feet of nettles. The mind fairly boggles. And if you want to see a film of the 2012 event, there is some on the Bottle Inn website here. There is not yet a date for the 2017 competition, but if you are keen to enter (and cannot be dissuaded) you’d better get practising now. The Bottle Inn sounds as if it might be worth a visit at any time, actually: it’s has a 16th Century building, and has won CAMRA West Dorset Pub of the Year in 2014 and 2016. I did wonder if nettles would form part of its menu, but sadly there aren’t any details online.

The Bottle Inn at Marshwood, home of the World Nettle-Eating Championships (Photo Two – see credit below)

Humans are not the only animals who consume nettles. You might remember the little green chap who was curled up on the nettle from last week. I suspect that s/he is the caterpillar of an Angle Shades moth, which is a most exquisite creature.

Angle Shades moth caterpillar (Phlogophora meticulosa)

Angle Shades moth (Photo Three – see credit below)

Nettles are also the preferred food plant of some of the Vanessid butterflies, such as the peacock and the red admiral. In the case of the peacock (Aglais io), the pale-green eggs are laid on the underside of the nettle leaves. I love the delicate structure of the eggs – they look like tiny gooseberries.

Peacock butterfly eggs (Photo Four- credit below)

The black spiky caterpillars emerge and build communal webs. If a hungry blue tit hoves into view, the tiny caterpillars wave and jerk their bodies back and forth in unison, which must give pause to any hungry predator.

Peacock butterfly caterpillars (Photo Five – see below)

Incidentally, it is said that a sudden flash of the eyespots on a peacock butterfly’s wings is enough to deter an animal as big as a hungry chicken. It can also produce a distinct hissing sound by rubbiing its wings together. It might float like a butterfly, but it can certainly defend itself.

All grown up! (Photo Seven- credit below)

The red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) is another butterfly whose caterpillars feed almost solely on nettles. This migrant insect (which is found all over North America, Asia and Europe) lays its eggs singly on the leaves, so this makes them easy to distinguish from the peacock eggs.

Red admiral eggs (Photo Six – see credit below)

The caterpillars make ‘tents’ out of the individual nettle leaves, sewing them around themselves as protection, and moving to bigger leaves as they grow. I will never forget my distress when my favourite patch of nettles in the local community garden, full of red admiral caterpillars, was strimmed to the ground by an over-zealous volunteer. Our urge to keep things tidy can be a real threat to wildlife, especially invertebrates. Fortunately, there is rarely a shortage of nettles in these parts, and long may this continue.

Red admiral caterpillars (Photo Seven – see credit below)

Adult red admiral (Photo Eight – see credit below)

Photo Credits

Photo One (Papardelle) – by T.Tseng https://www.flickr.com/photos/68147320@N02/11043367595

Photo Two (The Bottle Inn) – © Copyright RNE and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Photo Three (Angle Shades) – By ©entomart, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=311443

Photo Four (Peacock Butterfly Eggs) – By W. Schön – http://www.bund-nrw-naturschutzstiftung.de/schmetterling2009.htm, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5654101

Photo Five (Peacock Butterfly Caterpillars) – By aconcagua (talk) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27736513

Photo Five (Peacock Butterfly Adult) – By Charlesjsharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32422546

Photo Six (Red Admiral Eggs) – By Emmanuel Boutet – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1393559

Photo Seven (Red Admiral Caterpillars) – James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Eight (Adult Red Admiral) – HaarFager at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Every Wednesday, I hope to find a new ‘weed’ to investigate. My only criterion will be that I will not have deliberately planted the subject of our inquiry. Who knows what we will find…..

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) with what I think is an Angle Shades moth caterpillar  (of which more next week)

Dear Readers, I can scarcely believe that I have never featured stinging nettle on The Wednesday Weed , but it seems that it is so. Maybe I have been deterred by the sheer amount that there is to say about this most ubiquitous of ‘weeds’, which has featured in so many of our stories and which has been utilised by us in so many ways. In fact, there is so much to say that, for the first time ever, I am going to feature stinging nettle in two posts, with the second one being published next Wednesday. This week, I am going to concentrate on the thing that makes the nettle most memorable: it’s ability to sting.

It is actually quite unusual for plants to be as fierce in their defence as the stinging nettle is. I vividly recall my first encounter: my Dad had taken over a neglected allotment in Manor Park, East London, close to the towering gas holders. The whole family descended on it one sunny afternoon to clear the waist-high weeds. I grasped a handful of an innocuous looking plant, and felt it stab the palm of my hand. Even as I watched, great blisters came up on my wrists and inner arms. Dad stopped to see what all the wailing was about, and then grabbed a handful of dock leaves and crushed them onto the affected parts. It didn’t quite make it stop hurting, but it was definitely better afterwards, for perfectly valid scientific reasons which are described below.

Today, I was double-checking the foliage of my ‘nettle patch’ to make sure that it was stinging nettle, and so I have a couple of stings on my fingers. They are tingling even as I write. Maybe they will make my prose even more deathless than usual. Well, I can hope.

The little hypodermics of stinging nettle

The leaves and stem of a stinging nettle arecovered in hairs, some of which sting and some of which do not. When the stinging hairs come into contact with something (like a human hand, for example), the ‘cap’ of the hair is broken off, and the sharp point that remains injects chemicals into the skin.

Diagram of a stinging nettle hair (Photo One – credit below)

The mixture of ingredients includes a histamine, acetylcholine ( a neurotransmitter), and possibly formic acid. Treatment with an anti-histamine cream will help to alleviate the symptoms,but I find to my delight that dock leaves contain a natural anti-histamine which does the same job. I don’t know about you, but I find that as I get older, the effect of a nettle sting seems to last for longer, and I’m often still a bit tingly and sore several days after a nettle encounter. However, for me nettles are a quintessential part of a day out in the country: they gather under every stile, spring out from every woodland path and hide among the most innocent of greenery. The cry of ‘stinging nettle, mind your arms’ as we trooped through Wanstead Park as small children was as much part of my childhood as orange and lemon cupcakes and spam hedgehogs (mashed potato covered in spammy ‘spikes’ with tomato ketchup for eyes).

Incidentally, all that business about ‘grasping the nettle’ has never worked for me. I know the theory – that being firm with a nettle means that the stinging hairs will be forced to lay down flat against the stem and so pain will be prevented – but I’ve never known a nettle that had read this piece of folklore. Stroke them or grab them, they’ve always behaved just as uncouthly. A thick pair of gardening gloves and long sleeves work for me, though these nettles will happily sting through cotton and even thin summer trousers.

You might think that big animals like deer and cows would not be deterred by a little thing like a sting, but apparently they are. Although they are covered in fur, the lips and tongue of such animals are tender, and they are no fans of getting them covered in hives. So, the theory is that nettles developed their stings to stop themselves from being eaten. Apparently stinging nettles which grow in areas frequented by livestock develop a higher proportion of stinging hairs than those which are not constantly under threat of grazing. The production of such defences must be metabolically expensive for the plant, which is probably why not many species do it. However, the armoury of our stinging nettle pales into insignificance compared to some of its relatives.

Stinging Tree (also known as a Gympie Gympie tree) (Dendrocnide moroides) (Photo Two – see credit below)

The Stinging Tree or Gympie Gympie (Dendrocnide moroides) of Queensland in Australia has a famously long-lasting and potent sting, and is a member of the nettle family. Here is the testimony of a chap named Ernie Rider, who was slapped in the face and torso by the plant back in 1963:

“For two or three days the pain was almost unbearable; I couldn’t work or sleep, then it was pretty bad pain for another fortnight or so. The stinging persisted for two years and recurred every time I had a cold shower. … There’s nothing to rival it; it’s ten times worse than anything else.”

I must remember this next time I’m complaining about a nettle sting.

The English language has even developed a verb, ‘to nettle’, meaning ‘to irritate or harass’.

The relationship between human habitation and stinging nettles is not accidental. Nettles have a fondness for soil with high levels of phosphate and nitrogen, and so they often indicate spots where humans or animals have urinated or defecated. I think it’s no accident that the finest crop of nettles on the unadopted road in East Finchley is on the corner, a spot where I am willing to bet many chaps have stopped off on their way home from the pub for a wee. It’s said that the outline of Scottish crofts which have otherwise completely disappeared can still be identified by the stinging nettles that grow where the outhouses and middens would have stood, two hundred years after the infamous Highland Clearances took place.

Just a few words here on the sex-life of the nettle. As you might guess from the species name dioica,  nettles are dioecious, which means that some  nettles have male flowers and some have female flowers. The male flowers often have a purplish tinge at some point in their development and are held quite stiffly away from the plant. They have been described as looking like tiny Brussel sprouts.

Stinging Nettle (Male Flowers) – Photo Three (see credit below)

Close up of male stinging nettle flowers. Notice the four white anthers. Photo Four (see credit below)

The female flowers are in long, drooping catkins, and in full bloom are said to look as if they are covered in hoar-frost.

Female nettle flowers (Photo Five – credit below)

For some excellent photos of male and female nettles, have a look at The Wildflower Finder website.

The purpose of having separate male and female plants is, as usual, to ensure genetic diversity, by making sure that an individual plant can’t pollinate itself. The inconspicuous and plentiful flowers, and their lack of strong colour and scent, is an indication that this is a wind-pollinated plant, and indeed the pollen has been implicated in hay fever and other allergies. However, it is also used by some practitioners as a powerful anti-allergy agent. As we will see next week, stinging nettle has been used by humans in many ways: medicinally, as food, for clothing and as feed for domestic animals. It is also a critical food for many insects, including some of our most exquisite butterflies. But I would like to finish here with a poem that reflects our uneasy relationship with this plant. Vernon Scannell was a soldier during World War 2, and his poem ‘Nettles’ sums up the very human frustration with the natural world’s refusal to bow to our requirements.

Nettles by Vernon Scannell

My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
‘Bed’ seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
The boy came seeking comfort and I saw
White blisters beaded on his tender skin.
We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.
At last he offered us a watery grin,
And then I took my hook and honed the blade
And went outside and slashed in fury with it
Till not a nettle in that fierce parade
Stood upright any more. Next task: I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead.
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again.

Photo Credits

Photo One (diagram of nettle hair) – By Peter coxhead – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27752919

Photo Two (Gympie Gympie Tree) By Cgoodwin – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3380257

Photo Three (Stinging Nettle with male flowers) – By John Tann from Sydney, Australia (Stinging Nettle) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)]

Photo Four (Male Flowers) – By Frank Vincentz – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2513951

Photo Five (Female Flowers) – By Frank Vincentz – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2513964

Vernon Scannell Poem taken from https://www.tutorfair.com/blog/gcse-poem-analysis-nettles-by-vernon-scannell

All other blog content copyright Vivienne Palmer. Free to use and share non-commercially, but please attribute and link back to the blog, thank you!