Since I was little, my parents have always told me to put a dock leaf (or Rumex obtusifolius to give a specific species) on nettle stings.
This afternoon while I was weeding the garden (having returned home from university) I suffered a sting on my wrist and decided to make use of a nearby dock leaf. This got me wondering if they really do help. A quick trip to wikipedia gave me the statement “The Dock leaf is not known to have shown any curative properties of any kind beyond the placebo effect” without any source to back it up (and a [citation needed] tag). Rumex - Wikipedia
I think, if you ask me, that whenever I am stung by a nettle it burns for a second or two and then it’s gone. No need for any kind of treatment for me.
Dock leaves are mildly astringent (which should help a bit), but then so are a lot of plants - and anything juicy and a bit mucilaginous is going to have a slight soothing effect on nettle stings, Plantain juice works equally well, but for no particular reason.
Nettles are one of the tastiest wild greens I’ve eaten - made into soup (Onion, potato, nettles, stock) they taste expensive (you know, in the way that asparagus and globe artichokes taste expensive).
When I was a kid we’d grab oak ferns and smear the gunk on nettle stings. Everyone knew to do it and nobody ever talked about it. Looking back, I guess it could have been the juicy mucilagenousness that was the key soothing agent. I don’t live near nettles anymore so I can’t go out and check to see if anything else works just the same way. oh, I mean
Hated nettles. But they were useful for getting even with bullies. If the local badboy was strutting around shirtless on a hot day, we weaklings would each grab a 5-foot long nettle (only the bottom of the leaves sting you, the stem makes the perfect handle) and do a ride-by whipping up the creep’s back. And disappear into the rest of the day. Ah…kids.
Between gardening and mountain biking, I get stung by nettles a lot, and a gentle rub with a crushed dock leaf and a bit of spit works for me just fine. Millions of people all over Europe have done the same for generations and it’s worked for them too (don’t know about US customs regarding nettle lore). Information on how it works is a little harder to pin down though, and popular theories revolve around the effects of gentle rubbing per se, the effects of mild anti-histamines in the dock, the soothing effect of cool sap (and/or spit), and an acid/alkali neutralisation effect. The latter seems to be untrue (according to this research that involves stinging children and smearing them in goose dung, as far as I can make out). Alkaline substances will indeed neutralise the formic acid in a nettle sting, but alas docks are also acidic.
If I don’t treat a nettle sting I find it will itch for days, a bit of a rub with a crushed dock and it’s gone in minutes. Apparently plantain and milkweed work too, but I haven’t tried those.
The respected Kew Gardens in London have been collecting folk remedies for plants, and docks do indeed seem popular for nettle stings. Indeed nettles themselves are a popular remedy for many ailments, usually arthritis and rheumatism. Or for one respondent, “pudding”:dubious:
Nitpick: pretty much any part of the plant can sting you (although the biggest stinging spines are indeed on the underside of the leaves). If you grab a nettle leaf quickly, you will usually crush and break the spines without them piercing your skin - this takes a bit of courage (hence the folklore saying about ‘grasping the nettle’)
Any mucousy slimy marsh plant like touch-me-nots or cattails helps if put on immediately to remove the irritant and prevent spreading. I use wet marsh peat soil from nearby if that’s what is closest.
I’ve always found this to be true, although we call the wild variety “jewel-weed”. By some act of Providence, it always seems to grow in the close neighborhood of nettle.
I’ve never noticed any effect from using a dock leaf, other than getting green sap all over your leg.
Ever fallen into nettles that grow by a stream? For some reason proximity to running water seems to make the sting about 100x worse than those found in open fields.
The most convenient antidote for the sting of the stinging nettle is…nettle! Seriously. Just grab another leaf and mash it up (either in a gloved hand or on a rock) and smear the smashed nettle on the sting. Once those stickers are bruised, they don’t sting anymore, and the goo inside the leaf carries it’s own antidote. Nettle leaf in capsule, tea or tincture is a great anti-histamine and allergy reliever, so I suspect that same anti-histamine effect works to ease the inflammation (and thus pain) of the sting.
Source: just about every Herbal written in the last 600 years, and personal experience.
(Jewelweed, BTW, is great for neutralizing poison ivy, and grows within 10 feet of every poison ivy plant I’ve ever seen.)
oh, I mean 