A scrub nettle plant in a deep fertile and shady gully that has been heavily browsed by sambar during the winter months. This photograph was take in late spring, months after the deer had shifted their attention to other feeds. Note the stinging hairs in the stems.
With Ken Slee
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Apparently there are hundreds of different stinging nettle species around the world and I guess that most Australians will have come across this common Australian native plant at some time and will have a memory of the encounter embedded somewhere in their psyche.
For some reason stinging nettle don’t seem to be given much attention in books or on websites describing Australian native plants and trees – perhaps even botanists find it irritating. As far as I could determine with a quick search, this stinging nettle is the only Australian representative of the genus, although two additional species U. dioica (the ‘large leafed nettle’) and U. urens (the ‘small leafed nettle’) have been introduced since European settlement and are now relatively common in such places as gardens, sheep yards and stock camps.
Scrub nettle occurs from south-east Queensland, through New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, south-east South Australia to south-western Western Australia and is also present in New Zealand. Its preferred habitat is rainforest, riverbanks, and damp gullies and slopes – anywhere with fertile nitrogen-rich soils with adequate moisture. Such sites also favour dense vegetation but deep shade seems to be handled quite happily by scrub nettle.
Scrub nettle is very easy to identify as it grows from a mass of underground rhizomes or roots as a multi-stemmed perennial up to about two metres tall with leaves that are bright green, five to twelve centimetres long and 1.5 to six wide and with deeply indented margins. Flowers are small and inconspicuous as are the seeds that are produced. All parts of the plant are covered in stinging hairs. If you are still uncertain of what you are looking at, gently brush the back of your hand against it! Reddening, itching, swelling and a burning and tingling sensation will be your reward for the next few hours (and you will definitely be more knowledgeable and smarter too).
Scrub nettles from my experience put on fresh growth during the cold winter months when other plants in sambar country are dormant. The fact that they are armed with a potent weapon to deter browsing (their ability to sting) indicates that their stems and foliage are highly nutritious if an animal can get past those defences. And sambar love them during the depths of winter, presumably because there is a general shortage of feed at this time and the new growth on nettles is succulent and highly attractive to the deer. You would have to wonder though about how sambar can wrap their lips and tongue around such a nasty species without suffering painful stings. When being used by the deer patches of nettles will be virtually stripped of all of their leaves and the stems will be chewed back to stubs.
As with other plants that sambar eat, if you want to know how recent the browse sign is, check the ends of the stems that have been eaten off – if they have had time to go brown the evidence is old, but if still green the area is worth a serious look. As scrub nettles grow in damp gullies and on shady slopes with deeper, fertile soils there should also be deer tracks present in the immediate area or on nearby game trails – well worth looking for.
If you fancy yourself as a ‘Survivalist’ or a ‘New Age’ sambar hunter, scrub nettles may be ‘just the thing for you.’ Apparently nettles have been used for thousands of years right around the world by different societies – fibres extracted from stems can be used to make cord and cloth, dyes can be made from the foliage, the stings can relieve arthritis and depression, the leaves can be cooked as a substitute for the greens such as kale and spinach and herbal tea can also be brewed from the leaves. I can’t say that I have tried any of these uses though!
Scrub nettle foliage amongst a smorgasbord of other browse plants characteristic of a damp environment – blackberry, prickly coprosma and dogwood.
Another view of the characteristic bright green, serrated leaves of scrub nettle.
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