27.10.94

Phosphates give nettles high profile 

By Roger Highfield Science Editor

THE stinging nettle is growing taller on phosphate pollution from farm fertilizers and 
effluent in rivers.

Strains of the nettle Urtica dioica are growing to eight feet, two feet taller than usual, 
according to a report in New Scientist.

A survey by Dr Jack Oliver of the Wiltshire Botanical Society has shown that the giant 
strain is common on the banks of the Kennet, where vigorous nettles taller than eight feet 
are found.

In the past 40 years the nettle has become England's most widespread flowering plant, he 
says. It is "rampant on canal and river banks; by roads, tracks and field edges, in hedges 
and ditches; on dumps and waste sites; in woods, even downland."

A spokesman for English Nature, the state conservation agency, said: "Phosphate favours 
fast-growing plants such as nettles."

One plant disappearing in the nettle 's shade, says New Scientist, is the traditional sting 
remedy, the dock leaf.