The English Yew, Taxus bacata--Ordinary and Fabled

My earliest memory of yew is from a poem. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a historical novel, The White Company, as well as his Sherlock Holmes mysteries (The White Company).  As a teen I loved the book, and remember clearly a poem from it, celebrating a company of medieval archers, which goes in part, 

"What of the bow?

    The bow was made in England:

Of true wood, of yew-wood,

    The wood of English bows;

         So men who are free

         Love the old yew-tree

And the land where the yew-tree grows." (link),

of true wood, of yew-wood

English yews, Taxus bacata, as ornamentals

Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia

 In August,  I took a garden tour of Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. One of the important gardens on the tour was the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver.

pond and willow, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden

Classical Chinese gardens date back to at least the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1279). They were best developed as the retirement retreats of government bureaucrats. The owner set rocks, plants, and water around his home, to have pleasing and different views in all directions. In southern and coastal China, the house could be quite open, the garden and the indoors linked most of the year. 

Stinging Nettles Part II: FIber, Dye, and Folklore

Stinging nettles, Urtica dioica (nettle family, Urticaceae) have been used for food and medicine for millennia (see previous blog link). 

Fiber

They have also been used to make cloth and rope. The individual stalks do not branch and so contain fibers that can be four feet long. These can be separated from the surrounding plant tissue and braided or twined into thread or twine and then used to make items from soft cloth and fish nets to rope. Online videos show people stripping the leaves and outer stem off stinging nettles without gloves, so apparently you can grip it firmly at the base and avoid contact with the stinging hairs. Once the outer layers are removed the long fibers are pliable and can be twisted or braided while fresh or softened further in an alkaline bath. link The older literature mentions weaving nettles into table cloths and sheets. It could be bleached very white. In Germany, nettle fiber was used to supplement cotton into the 20th century. Using stinging nettle for its fibers goes back millennia, but is pretty much a forgotten art in western culture. 

stinging nettle, Urtica dioica

Native Americans across the continent made good use of stinging nettle fibers. They produced fishing lines, fish nets, twine, thread, bowstrings, baskets, fiber bags and cloth. 

Dyes

Nettles have a long history as a dye plant. Leaves, whole above-ground plants, and roots can be used. Colors obtained range from pale yellow, stronger yellows, olive greens, beiges and browns to black. The color obtained apparently depends on the mordant used and dyeing conditions but is further affected by growing conditions. Nettles naturally contain some iron, which acts as a mordant in nettle-dyed fiber, . saddening the colors, that is making them browner. An easily-found plant of Scotland, nettles were often used to create the yellows and dark greens in Harris tweeds. The colors are generally quite color-fast, not fading much over time or if exposed to sunlight.

As you might expect, dyers complain about the pain of collecting nettles and recommend other plants. 

stinging nettle

When people lived in villages and walked out into shared wild spaces to gather useful plants, stinging nettles were common weeds that could be harvested in large numbers for food or medicine, fiber or dyes, and trusted to grow back quickly. Today, we live in cities and suburbs, rarely with easy access to a source of stinging nettles. I have not had a place to gather nettles for many years. They are more common in the eastern United States and on the Pacific Coast than in the Great Plains. I would love to try making fiber from them or turn them into dye, but know nowhere I could gather them. That sounds strange, since most land-owners with patches of nettles would probably be happy to have those annoying plants removed, but it reflects our time, when you need permission to gather on property you do not own. 

A consequence of this is that more recent dye-plant books do not include nettles. Generally today  the writer grew or bought her dyestuffs and nettles weren't included. We rarely think of nettles when listing fiber plants, again because they aren't readily available today. Once important useful plants, nettles have been relegated to undesirable weeds. 

Folklore 

Nettles have had no problem gathering folklore because their sting makes them so memorable. For example: Sprinkle nettles around the house to keep out evil. To remove a curse and send it back, stuff a poppet (a small cloth doll) with nettles or carry some in a sachet. Place freshly cut nettles next to the sickbed to aid the patient's recovery. Toss stinging nettles into the fire during a thunderstorm to protect people from lightning. Beating arthritic hands with nettles to make them feel better sounds like folklore, but is a medical treatment of great antiquity. 

stinging nettle growing next to wild poppy, Norway

Nettles appear in a variety of admonitions, for example: 

     "If you gently touch a nettle,

      It'll sting you for your pains; 

      Grasp it like a lad of mettle,

       An' as soft as silk remains."

That is, tackle a difficult problem boldly. 

Nettles also have aphorisms: "Though you stroke a nettle ever so kindly, yet it will sting you" and "He that handles a nettle tenderly is soonest stung." 

stinging nettle

Appreciate stinging nettles when you see them. You'll still have to walk around them to avoid getting stung, of course. To paraphrase, "Though admire a nettle ever so sincerely, yet it will sting you."

Comments and corrections welcome.

References

Cannon, J. and M. Cannon. 1994. Dye Plants and Dyeing. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 

Casselman, K. L. 1993. Craft of the Dyer. 2nd edition. Dover Publications, New York. 

Cunningham, S. 2003. Cunningham's Encylcopedia of Magical Herbs. expanded & revised edition. Llewellyn Publications. St. Paul, MN.

Grierson, S. 1986.The Colour Cauldron. Milt Books. Perth. Scotland. 

Moerman, D. E. 1998. Native American Ethnobotany. Timber Press, Portland OR. See online database: link Accessed 1/12/25

Simpson, J. and J. Speake. 2009. Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 5th ed. online link Accessed 1/6/25

Kathy Keeler

A Wandering Botanist

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Stinging Nettle, Urtica dioica Stinging and Useful

Stinging nettle is a plant that too many of us only criticize. It stings! The tiny venom-filled hairs on the leaves are really painful to brush against. So suburbanites, farmers, hikers, hunters and many others,  dislike it; it stings, it makes places that you go around rather than through, nasty plant. 

stinging nettle, Urtica dioica

And yet, this is an excellent vegetable and healing herb. Heat the leaves and the stinging hairs are quickly destroyed, leaving rich, nutritious greens. For millennia people gathered stinging nettles for food and medicine. Today that is rare or confined to commercial medical production, so we only see them as irritating.