Tag Archives: Stinging Nettle

Hablitzia, Laportea and Nettle Gnocchi

What to do with the very last Sarpo Mira potatoes from the cellar? Last night’s dinner was Gnocchi made with Hablitzia leaf, Laportea canadensis (Canadian wood nettle tops) and stinging nettle tops. I must admit that our first attempt turned into a gnocchi soup, so we had a starter with exactly the same ingredients as the main course :) The second attempt was excellent though!

Hablitzia tamnoides leaves:

Canadian wood nettle (Laportea canadensis); the tops of the stems can also be used:
Making the gnocchi (potato used instead of grain for pasta):

68th Birthday Mac-Cheese with 68 shoots of 4 species

Last year’s birthday dinner was the Around the World in 80 Mac-Cheese,  this year’s green mac-cheese contained 68 Hablitzia shoots, 68 ramsons (ramsløk) leaves, 68 ground elder (skvallerkål) leaves and 68 stinging nettle (brennesle) shoots, with opium poppy seeds and nutty alpine bistort (harerug) bulbils on top! 
The video shows me collecting the Hablitzia shoots!

Walking’s not healthy for Habbies

I’ve been growing Hablitzia tamnoides, affectionately known as Habbies, for over 20 years and this is the first registered mortality. On a shallow bed under a birch tree, plants lift during winter as if to walk off to take over the world (OK, probably just frost heave as also happens with parsnip roots), and one of them is now no more, a dead Norwegian habby :( 

Here’s a few more that are going the same way of I don’t rescue them:

…and below is a nice little edible community where both self-sowed Siberian hogweed (Heracleum sibiricum) and stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) are growing happily in company with Hablitzia tamnoides!


March soba greens

Today it reached an unusually warm 16C here which encouraged the first bumble bees and honey bees out! The picture shows the greens (and whites) used in tonight’s soba (buckwheat noodle) stir-fry:
Hogweed (Heracleum spp.) shoots (far left, from the cellar); top row: Dystaenia takesimana (outside), chicons (chicory shoots; cellar), horseradish shoots (cellar), garlic and Allium scorodoprasum shoots (outside), Allium cernuum shoots (outside); Below from L to R: Dandelion (Taraxacum) shoots from the cellar, ground elder (Aegopodium podograria) shoots (outside), lesser celandine (Ficaria verna), wild buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum) seed sprouts (living room), nettle shoots (Urtica dioica), hedge mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and (bottom right) Hablitzia tamnoides shoots. 

Redpolls on nettle

As I’ve written before on this blog, nettles (Urtica spp.) are important food plants for birds, both due to insects and their larvae feeding on them in summer and the nutrient rich seed in winter. Today there was a small flock of redpolls (gråsisik) feeding on the seed on a small patch of stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) that I’ve been encouraging just below the house and in good view of the living room.

Bullfinch Nettle Feast

A group of seeding nettles strategically placed in view of a living room window provides a little entertainment in winter ( no, I didn’t plant them, but I deliberately didn’t cut them back). This is important food for various finches in winter including bullfinches (dompap).



Garden wild green soup

Last night we made a green pea soup and apart from the Hablitzia (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde), I used perennial vegetables growing in a wild part of the garden. With little or no help from me there’s a bounty of wild edibles in this area under wild hazels (Corylus avellana) and this made for a delicious pea soup with masses of greens. 
Campanula latifolia is documented as used in spring soups in the 16th century in my area in Norway and Heracleum shoots are also a tradional soup ingredient, in particular Russian borsch now thought of as a beetroot soup was originally made with hogweed shoots. 

Today’s perennial catch

23rd April 2020 perennial greens used in a delicious quiche (eggepai):
Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach / stjernemelde)
Myrrhis odorata (sweet cicely / spansk kjørvel)
Rumex acetosa  (sorrel / engsyre) 
Campanula latifolia (giant bellflower / storklokke)
Urtica dioica (stinging nettle / brennesle)
Allium senescens
Heracleum sphondylium (common hogweed /  kystbjørnekjeks)
Aegopodium podograria (ground elder / skvallerkål)



Slender nettle

Urtica gracilis (often classified as a subspecies of stinging nettle, Urtica dioica subsp. gracilis) is a widespread nettle species in North America including Canada and Alaska. It has many local names including slender nettle, California nettle and American nettle. This year, my tallest nettle is currently over 2.9m high!

It was (and is) an important plant of the first peoples throughout the continent from Vermont to Alaska,used as a vegetable, medicinally and, most importantly as a fibre plant, including fishing nets!. One native use I noted was “Rubbed on the bodies of sealers to keep them awake at night” :) (Moerman’s Native American Ethnobotany has a long list of uses)
My slender nettle has almost no stinging hairs, and, in general, has much less than stinginess than the introduced Urtica dioica subsp. dioica (stinging nettle) and Laportea canadensis (Wood Nettle; see my book Around the World in 80 plants). It is unisexual ( I seem to have just one sex as it doesn’t produce seeds…)

Added 300917: The friend in Granville, Ohio who sent me the seed of this nettle writes: “I collected the Urtica gracilis along the back of my property, near an old railroad (now a bike trail). It’s a common plant in “waste places”. I’ve never seen the plants grow that large here. Could your additional sunlight be to blame?”

Geirlauk

Sand leek (rocambole) or Allium scorodoprasum gives bigger yields here than leeks, so it’s not surprising to learn that this perennial onion was probably cultivated by the Vikings (it is found naturalised near many old Viking settlements in Scandinavia) and I believe it is the original “geirlauk” (meaning spear onion) and the root of the word garlic in English… See also pages 215-217 in my book!
I hadn’t noticed the red base to the stems seen in these pictures before…
I used it in a quick scrambled egg dish together with Amish onion (Allium x proliferum), sorrel flower shoots, ground elder (Aegopodium), nettle (Urtica dioica),  Hydrophyllum virginianum (water leaf) with golpar spice.
These pictures can also be seen on my 700 plus album of Allium pictures on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150966880345860

The scapes of Allium scorodoprasum could certainly be described as spear-like

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P1730104 Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) flowering stems