Country Life
Stung again
Peter Quince
Not for the first time, I find myself at odds with the wisdom of the ages as it has been distilled into proverbial form. It is better, so that excellent work the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs advises me, to be stung by a nettle than pricked by a rose. In its figurative meaning, that it is less hurtful to be wronged by a foe than by a friend, perhaps so; but I am frequently pricked by the thorns of my roses, and think nothing of it, whereas when I was caught unawares by a nettle the other day and given a sharp sting on the hand, the irritation nagged away at me for hours.
I suppose it's a sign of age, but I can hardly remember when I was last stung by a nettle before that. When I was a boy, I seem to remember, it was happening all the time. As the years pass one grows more careful about exposing oneself to such discomforts. On this occasion I was following a path through a wood where hardly anyone goes nowadays, and which I had not visited since the spring. I noticed too late that the path had shrunk from its former convenient width into the narrowest of defiles. A belt of lank nettles had sprung up along the neglected way, sprawling in their customary lackadaisical fashion in all directions.
There were no dock leaves nearby, or none that I could see, so I couldn't apply the traditional remedy on the spot. In any case that's another piece of proverbial wisdom I have my doubts about. It has come down to us through the centuries, I know; it is hallowed by authorities as far back as Chaucer and quite possibly a good deal farther; but in my experience its merit is dubious. Perhaps I never mastered the technique, although I can remember often enough staining my hands green with dock leaves to suppress The nettle's poison. It never seemed to have much effect.
All I could do, therefore, was to seek consolation in shallow philosophical reflections about the relative benevolence of the English countryside, which seldom offers any greater threat than this trifling itch from a nettle-sting. I remembered leaving New York years ago, to spend a peaceful country weekend with friends on Long Island, and being greeted by a host whose arm was swathed in a massive cocoon of bandages from wrist to shoulder. "Poison ivy," he said brusquely when I asked what dreadful accident had happened to him. Now that is a truly hostile form of vegetation. Not as ferocious perhaps, as the famous Burning Nettle (or Devil's Leaf) of Java, which is said to kill its victims on occasion, and which certainly causes terrible pain for many months; but still bad enough. We are really fortunate in our nettles.
These stinging plants are also interesting botanically, although that is an attribute more readily appreciated when one has not just brushed a hand against one of them. As examples of evolution they bewilder me, as, I am afraid, evolution so often does. Nettles are soft and juicy inside their formidable protection, and so would no doubt be eaten freely if they hadn't developed the art of self-defence to such a high degree of perfection. They are in fact still gathered and cooked by some people, although they could not by any stretch of the imagination come into the modern category of convenience foods.' But then, a great many other plants are also good to eat and are in fact eaten: by what mysterious process did the nettle decide that it would have no more of this, and so develop its armature of poisonous hairs to discourage the process?
It is, no doubt, a foolish question, no more sensible than childish inquiries as to the 'use ' of unattractive creatures such as slugs. Why did some other plants, the dead-nettle for instance, develop so as to seek safety in imitating the nettle's appearance, instead of acquiring their own defences? I suppose I should know better than to ask myself such questions.
In any case it is a thoroughly efficient system of defence. Each of a nettle plant's myriad minute hairs has a capsule at its base, and the plant, having manufactured its poison, stores a drop of it in each capsule. The hairs themselves are hollow and neatly sealed at the top: and when some careless passer-by, such as myself, knocks against the nettle, the seal is broken and the poison released into the passer-by's bloodstream. It is, in fact, very close to the principle employed by the adder's envenomed fang.
There is this to be said for nettles — they die away early in the season and leave the field clear for the clumsiest of pedestrians. Already, I noticed, as I looked at the thicket of nettles in the wood, the colour was draining away from the leaves, giving them the distinction of being the first growing things there to signal the approach of autumn in this way. Quite soon they will wither.
There is also, I should add, something to be said in favour of this system of 'glandular hairs ' which the nettle demonstrates so effectively. It is this same system which, when employed by the leaves of the hop, produces, not a poisonous dagger, but the substance lupulin, which gives beer its flavour and its bitter taste; and I would rather treat a nettle-sting with a pint or two of that than a handful of dock-leaves any day.
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