Tag Archives: stinging nettle

Dock Leaf: A Stinging Nettle Remedy

Main piece: Stinging nettle is a plant that stings a lot when you touch it, and leaves like welts and stuff – it’s nasty, but there’s like knowledge that there’s this plant called Dock Leaf, that you can use and it will reduce the stinging from a nettle if you just rub the leaves on wherever you were affected by the plant. 

I think that they just happen to grow together, like they just grow side by side. I mean, nobody plants nettle. I think it’s just a natural occurrence that, for whatever reason, those two plants just like to grow next to each other, so you can usually find Dock Leaf if you find nettle. 

Background: O’s father grew up in Malmesbury, a town in Wiltshire, England. O has been visiting her grandparents and aunt, who still live there, once every year or two since as long as she can remember. Her father and grandparents taught her about the dock leaf remedy.

Context: O started talking about visiting her family in rural England, and how she and her brother would entertain themselves there, as there isn’t much to do. She recounted a particular story where her younger brother got stinging nettle all over his body, and they did not have enough dock leaves to help him negate the pain he was feeling, but she has engaged successfully with the practice before.

Analysis: Dock leaf is a folk medicine that arises from the existence of stinging nettle. Dock leaves and stinging nettle grow in similar environments, and it has been found that rubbing dock leaves against one’s skin releases a soothing moisture (kind of like aloe). Stinging nettle and dock leaf both grow in abundance in that particular area of England, so it makes sense that other plants surrounding stinging nettle could be sought after/experimented with for a cure. O and her family continue to use dock leaf to combat nettle stings, both because dock leaf is often found nearby (instead of having to go back to the house to grab other medicine), and it can abate some of the immediate effects more quickly. (For another version, see Sutter, May 18, 2020, “Stinging Nettle Plant Remedy”, USC Folklore Archives).

Stinging Nettle Plant Remedy

Background: The informant is a man in his late 50s. he grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania before moving to upstate New York for college. In his mid 20s, he moved to Southern California and has lived there ever since.

Context: Growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the 70s, the informant recalls that the suburbs were relatively remote with forests on either side, where children would often play unsupervised. Because the neighborhood was relatively new, most of the adults living there had not grown up in the neighborhood and were not familiar with the local flora and fauna.

Main Text:

“Along the creek, you could just walk along and there would be, yknow, bushes and things like that. So one of them was stinging nettles, but we called it “Burn Hazel” when I was a kid. So when you brushed against it, it felt like you got poison ivy—you’d get bumps, all of a sudden it was incredibly itchy, but the older kids taught the younger kids…there was another plant called the “Elephant Ear” plant, and I have no idea what this plant was in reality, but it had big leaves. If you took that plant and rubbed it on it, it would cure it. And the parents never knew this, it was passed on from kid to kid, generation to generation.

Thoughts: Perhaps the most interesting part of this remedy is that the informant can identify the irritant plant “Burn Hazel” by its more commonly known name of Stinging Nettle but has had no luck finding out what “Elephant’s Ear” actually is. The other fascinating element about this herbal remedy is that only children seemed to know about it, since most of their parents did not grow up in the neighborhood where this herbal remedy was located. I wonder if children in the neighborhood nowadays know these tips and tricks—the informant says that much of the forest has been destroyed to build more homes, and his family who remained in town and are raising their children there don’t let them go around unsupervised.