Well, I’m a type O also, but I only seem to get bitten when I am out alone. If anyone else is with me, I hardly notice mosquitoes, but go to the exact same location alone, and suddenly there they are.
What’s worse, though, is when I go to North Carolina and the deer flies are constant.
Dropped my phone in a prairie doing a bioblitz and had to use Sam’s (sambiology) phone to find it. Also dropped my binoculars. I was easily distracted and flustered that day, but I found both.
In the UK, stinging nettles are Urtica dioica ssp. dioica; in California, they would be U. dioica ssp. gracilis, U. dioica ssp. holosericea or Urtica urens. All these taxa have stinging hairs. (Only one of the six U. dioica subspecies is stingless.)
Research from 2006 suggests that oxalic acid and tartaric acid are the main compounds that cause pain in Urtica species (previously, formic acid, histamine and serotonin were thought to be responsible):
HAN YI FU, SHIANG JIUUN CHEN, RUEI FENG CHEN, WANG HSIEN DING, LING LONG KUO-HUANG, RONG NAN HUANG, Identification of Oxalic Acid and Tartaric Acid as Major Persistent Pain-inducing Toxins in the Stinging Hairs of the Nettle, Urtica thunbergiana , Annals of Botany , Volume 98, Issue 1, July 2006, Pages 57–65, https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcl089
I couldn’t find any research comparing the pain caused in humans by different Urtica taxa, possibly because no one has been foolish enough to subject themselves to this voluntarily. In the 2006 study, the level of pain caused by various compounds in Urtica thunbergiana was assessed by injecting the compounds into the hind paws of rats, which seems unnecessarily mean.
I couldn’t find any research comparing the pain caused in humans by different Urtica taxa, possibly because no one has been foolish enough to subject themselves to this voluntarily.
Sounds like a job for Coyote Peterson. Getting bitten and stung by things and posting it on YouTube is his whole shtick (He pairs it with some good nature programming and some admirable conservation efforts, though, so it’s not as dumb as it sounds). I bet if he were on iNat, he’d have a few worst experiences to share.
Well, don’t be so sure. You know that old wives’ tale that says the nettle doesn’t sting if you grip it hard? Well, I was skeptical of that, because I am aware of the wild foods foraging practice of wearing leather gloves when harvesting nettles. It seemed to me that if the old wives’ tale was true, foragers would be the ones to know for sure.
So I tried the experiment. The old wives tale is most assuredly untrue. But that won’t stop it from making the rounds of social media from time to time.
My hypothesis on where that story comes from: that it was an “initiation” whereby country kids get some laughs at the city slicker. The country kids tell city slicker the tale – and one of them may even “demonstrate.” Of course they get stung, but they were expecting it, so they are able to hide any reaction. City slicker believes them and also tries it – and get stung while not expecting it. Cruel laughter ensues.
I have also found that nettle stings are good for relieving itchiness.
Hah! I also remember testing that theory as a child.
One explanation that I’ve heard advanced is that the stinging hairs are on the stems and underside of the leaves. So, if you grasp the leaves from above you can pick them while (mostly) avoiding getting stung. To me this technique seems like a poor substitute for sturdy gloves.
It seems that the folk wisdom has a long history, with records of supposedly safe nettle-grasping going back to the 16th century. The best know formulation seems to have come in a poem by Aaron Hill published posthumously:
Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you, for your pains:
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk, remains.
On the other hand, there’s the book “The Sting of the Wild” by Justin O. Schmidt who describes stings by many kinds of insects. And then there’s Michael L. Smith who rated a bee sting on different parts of his body (he got an ig-nobel prize in 2015 for that)…
C’mon, isn’t an ig-nobel prize good enough a motivation for some people here to try some Urtica ingredients?
Yikes. Sorry to hear that. I never would have considered this as a problem that could happen more than as a one-off, but sounds like that is not the case. This would definitely put me off venturing out into those areas again if I were in your shoes, so bravo for continuing undaunted! Just in case it’s not clear, I get that this should not be happening to you, maybe find an authority to lodge a complaint?
Just out of curiosity, were all these experiences in Texas, or other places as well?
Totally true. I have picked nettles myself using that method.
And (crazy Nettle Fact) my mom can eat raw nettle leaves. I believe the method is to roll the leaves up into a cylinder with the top part on the outside, then keep them that way while you chew them up. Never actually tried it myself, but I’ve seen her do it.
Are nettles really that tasty? I had some nettle soup once and it was awful; exceedingly over loaded with black pepper. I assumed that was a mistake on the part of the chef.
Funny you say that. I had nettle soup once in Russia and it mostly just tasted of garlic, which I also assumed was the result of an overexuberant chef. Mine wasn’t awful, but nothing I would have written home about if it hadn’t had nettles. I always wanted to try making my own without the garlic, but haven’t gotten around to it. As I recall, it used mostly young plants, if that matters.
My mom has totally made soup with nettles in it; I’m not sure if I’d call it Nettle Soup since it always has lots of other stuff in it too. It tastes fine. Nettles have a certain flavor, which I like but you might not. You could try making your own nettle soup with fresh nettles if you know where some are. Don’t worry if the cooked nettles don’t look very appetizing, they taste fine.
Older plants are fine as long as they haven’t gone to seed, but young ones usually taste better.
Yes, I find them so. But then, I don’t overdo the pepper or the garlic. I don’t always have them in soup, either; my favorite way is as steamed greens, with butter.
I once witnessed a Green Banana/Cuban Cockroach inside my house. I took several pictures of it, and I thought it would be interesting to try and capture it inside a bottle. Unfortunately, I used a 500 mL drinking bottle, which has a relatively smaller opening compared to the Green Banana Cockroach. As expected, any insect being approached by a scary looking, bipedal ape would react with fear.
And that fear, or perchance a defense response, led the Green Banana Cockroach to fly directly at me. Fortunately, it did not land on my head (this did happen to me once when randomly walking outside, but with a different cockroach). Instead, it landed on my shirt. I was wearing a green shirt at the time, so maybe it was partially attracted to it? Obviously, I freaked out, and I tried to swat it away.
After what was probably a traumatic experience for the Green Banana Cockroach and myself (including my mother), I finally did manage to trap it. There was an empty one gallon bottle that the family had not thrown out yet, and it appeared to be the perfect vessel for trapping an unsuspecting bug. Well, at least partially unsuspecting, anyway. The Green Banana Cockroach had flown onto a support wall in the kitchen within arms reach, and there was an auspicious opportunity.
With quick thinking, I unscrewed the cap of the bottle and slowly trapped the Green Banana Cockroach in the neck of the bottle. When I moved the bottle, the bug crawled further into the container. I immediately put on the cap and screwed it tight. Now I had a green bug in a bottle. Instead of killing it, I thought it would be interesting to observe Green Banana Cockroach for several days.
What was several days turned into several weeks. Three weeks, to be exact. I noticed that the cockroach, which I will refer to as Verdant for convenience, had bright red eyes. I also moved the bottle around to see it scuttle. Sometimes, I would see Verdant turn its head to look back at me when I take a gander at it. I almost felt pity and remorse for keeping Verdant in its bottle, slowly dying from malnutrition, dehydration, and probably lack of social activity.
Should I have released Verdant? After all, the Green Banana Cockroach is kept as a pet. Alas, past death’s door, the little green bug clung to the walls of its translucent prison. Finally falling its last fall in the container, Verdant was on its back, peering hopelessly at the light of a day which will never come.
It seems like you were fond of Verdant. You certainly wrote a moving story about his captivity. I confess I am a little bothered about the lack of water and food.
How hard is it really to give it a little fruit or vegetable to nourish it?
Yes, these things happened in Texas. In the South, there is the attitude that nature and the outdoors are for white men only.
If I tried to open the container, Verdant would have come flying out from the container, and my mother would have tried to squish it or spray it with bleach. :(
Did you log the ticks though? 