The Urticaceae are a family, the nettle family, of flowering plants. The family name comes from the genus Urtica. The Urticaceae include a number of well-known and useful plants, including nettles in the genus Urtica, ramie, māmaki, and ajlai.
Urtica dioica, often known as common nettle, stinging nettle or nettle leaf, or just a nettle or stinger, is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant in the family Urticaceae. Originally native to Europe, much of temperate Asia and western North Africa, it is now found worldwide, including New Zealand and North America. The species is divided into six subspecies, five of which have many hollow stinging hairs called trichomes on the leaves and stems, which act like hypodermic needles, injecting histamine and other chemicals that produce a stinging sensation upon contact. The plant has a long history of use as a source for traditional medicine, food, tea, and textile raw material in ancient societies such as the Saxons.
Urtica is a genus of flowering plants in the family Urticaceae. Many species have stinging hairs and may be called nettles or stinging nettles, although the latter name applies particularly to Urtica dioica.
Lamium (dead-nettles) is a genus of about 40–50 species of flowering plants in the family Lamiaceae, of which it is the type genus. They are all herbaceous plants native to Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, but several have become very successful weeds of crop fields and are now widely naturalised across much of the temperate world.
Urtica ferox or ongaonga, also known as tree nettle, taraonga, taraongaonga, оr okaoka. is a nettle that is endemic to New Zealand. Unlike other herbaceous species in the genus Urtica, ongaonga is a large woody shrub that can grow to a height of 3 m (9.8 ft), with the base of the stem reaching 12 cm (4.7 in) in thickness. It has large spines that can result in a painful sting that lasts several days.
Dendrocnide moroides, also known as the stinging brush, mulberry-leaved stinger, gympie, gympie stinger, stinger, the suicide plant, or moonlighter, is a plant in the nettle family Urticaceae common to rainforest areas in the north-east of Australia. Gympie-gympie, its common and original name, comes from the language of the indigenous Gubbi Gubbi people of South Queensland. It is also found in Indonesia. It has stinging hairs which cover the whole plant and delivers a potent neurotoxin when touched, by the small bulb that is found on the tip of the stinging hairs being broken off and penetrating the skin to inject the toxin. It is the most toxic of the Australian species of stinging trees. The fruit is edible to humans if the stinging hairs that cover it are removed.
Urera is a genus of flowering plants in the nettle family, Urticaceae. It has a pantropical distribution.
Laportea is a genus of plants in the family Urticaceae. They are herbaceous, either annual or perennial. Like many plants of the Urticaceae, they have stinging hairs. There are stinging and non-stinging hairs on the same plant. The genus was named after the French naturalist Francis de Laporte de Castelnau.
Laportea canadensis, commonly called Canada nettle or wood-nettle, is an annual or perennial herbaceous plant of the nettle family Urticaceae, native to eastern and central North America. It is found growing in open woods with moist rich soils and along streams and in drainages.
Dendrocnide is a genus of 37 species of shrubs to large trees in the nettle family Urticaceae, known as stinging trees. Dendrocnide excelsa, also called Australian nettle tree, fibrewood, gimpi gimpi, giant stinging tree, gympie, is a rainforest tree of eastern Australia. It occurs from Tathra, New South Wales to Imbil in southeastern Queensland, and is very common at Dorrigo National Park and other rainforest walks in eastern Australia. The habitat of the giant stinging tree is subtropical, warm temperate or littoral rainforest, particularly in disturbed areas, previously flattened by storms or cyclones.
Dendrocnide sinuata is a poisonous plant called pulutus', pulus, stinging tree, fever nettle, or elephant nettle, growing in subtropical wet evergreen forests throughout Asia. Some of its uses in herbal medicine have been scientifically validated.
Acanthopale pubescens is a species of the genus Acanthopale of the family Acanthaceae. The species occurs in East and Southern Africa. Acanthopale pubescensis also known as Herayye in Ethiopia.
Urtica massaica is a species of flowering plant in the Urticaceae known by many English names, including Maasai stinging nettle and forest nettle. It is native to Africa, where it can be found in Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Cnidoscolus urens is a perennial, tropical American stinging herb of the family Euphorbiaceae, and is one of some 100 species belonging to the genus Cnidoscolus. The plant is locally known as 'bull nettle', 'spurge nettle', 'bringamosa' and 'mala mujer'.
A stinging plant or a plant with stinging hairs is a plant with hairs (trichomes) on its leaves or stems that are capable of injecting substances that cause pain or irritation.
Boehmeria cylindrica, with common names false nettle and bog hemp, is an herb in the family Urticaceae. It is widespread in eastern North America and the Great Plains from New Brunswick to Florida to Texas to Nebraska, with scattered reports of isolated populations in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, as well as in Bermuda, Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and South America.
Urera trinervis (Hochst.) Friis & Immelman is a softly woody dioecious liane, sometimes epiphytic, climbing to 20 m, often to the canopy and hanging in festoons. It is one of some 44 species of Urera belonging to the nettle family Urticaceae. It is known in English as the tree climbing-nettle or climbing nettle.
Tragia involucrata, the Indian stinging nettle, is a species of plant in the family Euphorbiaceae.
Leucospermum formosum is a large upright shrub of up to 3 m (10 ft) high, from the family Proteaceae. It grows from a single trunk and its branches are greyish felty. The softly felty leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, 6½–10 cm long and 14–20 mm (0.56–0.80 in) wide. The flower heads are flattened and about 15 cm (6 in) across, and consist of bright yellow flowers from which long, styles emerge which are strongly clockwise bent just below the white, later pink thickened tip. From above, the heads look like turning wheels. It is called silver-leaf wheel-pincushion in English. It flowers during September and October. It is an endemic species of the Western Cape province of South Africa.
