I thought I'd touched nettles before, but this is a new one on me. Twenty-four hours later, I still felt as though I had electrodes hooked up to my fingers.Wikipedia tells me that the stem of the Urtica dioica bears short and long hairs. The long hairs are little needles that inject acetylcholine, histamine, 5-HT (serotonin), moroidin, leukotrienes, and possibly formic acid. (My nettle sting did feel a bit like an ant-bite at first.)
"Urtication" is the process of flogging with nettles. It's not done only to torment; it is considered a folk remedy for rheumatism. Similarly, a beekeeper of my acquaintance reports that it is common knowledge among his colleagues that beekeepers have no autoimmune diseases, a fact they attribute to being routinely stung in the course of their duties. I have heard reports of people cured of crippling arthritis after a dangerous bout with multiple bee stings. So maybe I should be out there grasping nettles, or annoying bees, but I think I'll pass.
Nettles lose their sting upon being cooked, and are said to taste like spinach. Late in their season, however, they produce a gritty molecule that can irritate the urinary tract, so harvest them young. They are used to flavor some cheeses, such as Yarg and Gouda. Their stems produce a fiber somewhat like linen, but coarser. Their roots produce a useful yellow dye. Their presence indicates highly fertile soil, and they are excellent sources of nitrogen for compost. They are one of the few plants that can tolerate and even flourish in soils rich in poultry droppings. We certainly have those. Major chicken-poop operation going on here, though I must say that the nettles were growing quite a distance from the chicken coops.
It's been about 27 hours, and now the effect is finally wearing off.
I once cut a piece of prickly-pear cactus that didn't seem to have any spines, and stuck it in my back pocket to grill up later over the campfire. That was a similar experience.
ReplyDeleteRead somewhere the Indians would use it to promote wakefulness on long night ambushes.
ReplyDeleteThere is a plant that will counteract it. Jewelweed, I believe.
ReplyDeleteI'll look it up.
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ReplyDeleteIt is jewelweed. Curled dock or a paste of baking soda works as well.
ReplyDeleteChickens adore jewelweed, and it improves egg quality. Looks like your girls are helping to make their own food!
I've never seen jewelweed. Our chickens eat a lot of aptly-named chickweed, as well as dandelions and all kinds of thinnings from our garden. This time of year, when there are lots of greens for them, their yolks get very orange.
ReplyDeleteGrim, your experience reminds me of when my husband put an MEK-soaked rag in his back pocket.
I kept bees from age 11 through 17, when the American foulbrood epidemic wiped my hives out. Our family doctor once told me that I'd been stung so often, I'd never get arthritis. Another interesting side effect is that, even today, I'm immune to bee venom -- even the initial sting doesn't pack the usual wallop.
ReplyDeleteJewelweed also works on 'skeeter bites...
Given the composition of the toxin, you'd think anti-histamines like benadryl might help. I've always been told that nettles stung for a few hours, and the one time I brushed one, it only lasted a few minutes. Perhaps there are other factors- how deep, how much contact area, etc. You said fingers- did you grasp it? That might increase the depth of penetration, and of course, you picked an area of exposure with good blood flow, and lots of nerves- not like I need to tell you.
ReplyDeleteIf bee stings really innoculate one from auto-immune diseases, I need to take up beekeeping. My allergies and asthma just keep getting worse.
Calamine lotion worked for me, back in the day when the pack of neighborhood kids went roaming through the woods. Lots of nettles, so we picked up basic plant identification skills at a young age.
ReplyDeleteI've yet to be stung by a bee, but I got attacked by wasps after stepping in their nest. 35+ stings in less than a minute and now I'm hypersensitive to the little [censored].
LittleRed1
Actually, chickens adore nettles, not jewelweed.
ReplyDeleteJewelweed grows along shady creek banks.
Here you go:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impatiens
It grows in all the southern states, so I'm sure there some near you. Garden impatiens probably work as well.
Ran into plenty of nettles growing up in Oregon. My Pop would pour vodka over the area then soak a rag and cover it for a *little while* until the stinging went away....usually no longer than 10-15 minutes.
ReplyDelete0>;~}
Tobacco leaves dampened or made into a paste with baking soda works pretty well to relieve the pain too.
ReplyDeleteWhen the kids were young, they were bee-sting magnets. It seemed as if the stinging insects would fly from miles around, past me, past Walkin' Boss, and past anyone else in the area, just to sting one of the young'uns.
We always kept a couple of cigarettes in a rubber maid container in the kitchen along with the normal Benadryl liquid, band-aid, Epipen, and other assorted sting, burn, minor injury first-aid stuff.
DISCLAIMER: Now Grandpas tobacco poultice is for topical applications only and one should not smoke or chew the poultice afterwards.
BTW, anyone wanting to get up close and personal with bees or their wasp cousins -- for medicinal purposes-- is welcome to visit the hovel in the summer.
We usually have swarms of honey bees working the blooms, wasps of the various clans, and inevitably I will discover at least one yellow jacket nest with the mower or just fiddlin' about.
"BTW, anyone wanting to get up close and personal with bees or their wasp cousins -- for medicinal purposes-- is welcome to visit the hovel in the summer."
ReplyDeleteAfter the VES got stung in the eye by a wasp during our last PCS, and then again in the same eye within weeks of disembarking at our current locale, I'll take my chances with other, less painful, methods.
Now, if you'd just offered a friendly libation and meal - sans stinging, biting or just downright ornery insects? I'd be Googling the route right now....
0>;~}
"Now, if you'd just offered a friendly libation and meal - sans stinging, biting or just downright ornery insects? I'd be Googling the route right now...."
ReplyDeleteYou and the crew would always be welcome at the hovel.
All I would ask is sufficient warning to run the chickens off the front yard, draw the water to bathe and then change into a clean pair of bib-overhauls. =;^}
Just this week I've had to replace the harmonic balancer and two engine mounts on the pickup's 454. Then the auto trans cooler line ruptured and necessitating a length of SS ⅜" tube be cut, shaped, double-flared and replaced.
Just today I relocated my 20' flag pole from the Japanese Tulip tree locale (Old Glory was overgrown by a Tulip tree!) to a new location.
Of course the move meant purchasing a 6"x6"x12' PT post. Cutting 45° along each corner turning it into a octagonal post. Drilling a 1½" hole 18" deep in the top of the octagonal post. Cutting 45° all around the top of the post, then inserting the aluminum flag pole in the post and securing it via two ¼" x 5" carriage bolts and drilling a weep hole at the bottom of the 18" pocket. Finally adding new hardware, pulley, line, cleats, etc., and digging a 4' post hole, then sinking the new/improved post/flagpole and pouring concrete around the pole while insuring it's plumb. How can I call it new/improved, if it ain't improved?
Yup, for an old cripple I stay pretty busy and dirty and would hate to have decent folk drop in while I'm amblin' and gimpin' around lookin' like the character Pig Pen from the Peanuts gang.
Bee stings have very little effect on me, beyond burning for a few minutes. The nettle's effect was not what I'd call pain, more like a tingling that wouldn't go away, for so long it surprised me, since I rarely react to things like that. I did read that antihistamines would help.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, I was taking sudafed at the time I brushed the nettles, so that may have been part of the reason it only lasted a few minutes- how about that- prophylactic medication for stinging nettles...
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