Urtica Dioica

bio:species:urtica_dioica

Urtica dioica — common nettle. Urticaceae, order Rosales. Characters: a square-sectioned, usually unbranched stem to about 1.5 m; leaves OPPOSITE, stalked, coarsely toothed, pointed, the base heart-shaped; the whole plant clothed in two kinds of hair, ordinary ones and brittle stinging hairs whose tip breaks off against skin; flowers tiny, greenish, without petals, hanging in branched catkin-like clusters from the leaf axils; the species is usually dioecious, so a stand is male or female, and the male's stamens spring open and throw pollen to the wind. Setting: deep, damp, nitrogen-rich, disturbed ground — farmyards, middens, riverbanks, the shaded foot of a wall, and the ground where people have lived. Range: native across temperate Europe and Asia and into North Africa, carried by settlement almost everywhere else. Naming: urtica from Latin urere, to burn; dioica from the Greek for 'two households', which is the character itself written into the name.