What Are Nettles Good For?

They are valuable food and habitat for a variety of insect species, particularly butterflies, including:  Red Admirals, Peacocks, Commas and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies.  Moth larvae that like nettles include the Golden Y, the Spectacle and the Burnished Brass moth.

Nettles are also important nurseries for ladybird larvae.

Nettles are quite edible.  They are very rich in iron and can be stewed down to make tea, soup or used like spinach (but the iron in nettles is more bio-available than the iron in spinach).

Nettles are considered a valuable medicinal plant in folk-lore.  Tincture made from the plant is used as an expectorant (decongestant), for flu, for coughs, as a diuretic, to treat cystitis and to alleviate symptoms of nephritis.

Nettle juice can be used as a clothes dye.  Nettle fibres can be woven to make fabric, similar to its close cousin ramie.   Clothes made at least partly from nettles were most in vogue in Britain during the last World War.

To revise the custom of making clothes from nettles could make a lot of sense environmentally; unlike cotton it is a low input crop (needs little watering, fertilisers, herbicides or pesticides).