[3][4] The plant has a long history of use as a source for traditional medicine, food, tea, and textile raw material in ancient (such as Saxon) and modern societies.

The leaves have a strongly serrated margin, a cordate base, and an acuminate tip with a terminal leaf tooth longer than adjacent laterals.

[18] Human and animal waste may be responsible for elevated levels of phosphate[19] and nitrogen in the soil, providing an ideal environment for nettles.

[22] Three cultivation techniques can be used for the stinging nettle: 1) direct sowing, 2) growing seedlings in nurseries with subsequent transplantation and 3) vegetative propagation via stolons or head cuttings.

[23] The stinging nettle can also be grown in controlled-environment agriculture systems, such as soil-less medium cultivations or aeroponics, which may achieve higher yields, standardize quality, and reduce harvesting costs and contamination.

[37] After the stinging nettle enters its flowering and seed-setting stages, the leaves develop gritty particles called cystoliths.

In its peak season, nettle contains up to 25% protein, dry weight, which is high for a leafy green vegetable.

[42] Nettles are used in Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the dough filling for the börek pastry.

The top baby leaves are selected and simmered, and then mixed with other ingredients such as herbs and rice, before being used as a filling between dough layers.

"[47][48] As Old English stiðe, nettle is one of the nine plants invoked in the pagan Anglo-Saxon Nine Herbs Charm, recorded in 10th-century traditional medicine.

The sentenced perpetrator of a crime was flogged with stinging nettle, in public, naked, whilst being showered with freezing cold ice water.

[53] Nettle stems contain a bast fibre that has been traditionally used for the same purposes as linen and is produced by a similar retting process.

[55] It is widely believed that German Army uniforms were almost all made from nettle during World War I due to a shortage of cotton, although there is little evidence to support this.

[63] Minerals (Ca, K, Mg, P, Si, S, Cl) and trace elements (Ti, 80 ppm,[64] Mn, Cu, Fe) contents depend mostly on the soil and the season.

[65] Depending on the batch and the leaf and stem content, nettle contains only traces of zeaxanthin or between 20–60 mg/kg of dry matter.

[citation needed] In the European Union, nettle extract can be used as an insecticide, fungicide, and acaricide under Basic Substance regulations.

[73][74] Nettles contain nitrogenous compounds, so are used as a compost activator[75] or can be used to make a liquid fertilizer, which although low in phosphate, is useful in supplying magnesium, sulphur, and iron.

[79] Regular and persistent tilling will greatly reduce its numbers, and the use of herbicides such as 2,4-D and glyphosate are effective control measures.

[79] In Great Britain and Ireland, U. dioica and the annual nettle Urtica urens are the only common stinging plants and have found a place in several figures of speech in the English language.

Shakespeare's Hotspur urges that "out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety" (Henry IV, Part 1, Act II Scene 3).

[80] In Seán O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, one of the characters quotes Aesop "Gently touch a nettle and it'll sting you for your pains/Grasp it as a lad of mettle and soft as silk remains".

The metaphor may refer to the fact that if a nettle plant is grasped firmly rather than brushed against, it does not sting so readily, because the hairs are crushed down flat and do not penetrate the skin so easily.

[81] In the German language, the idiom sich in die Nesseln setzen, or to sit in nettles, means to get into trouble.

In French, the idiom faut pas pousser mémé dans les orties (do not push granny into the nettles) means that we should be careful not to abuse a situation.

[84] There is a common idea in Great Britain that the nettle was introduced by the Romans,[85] but Plant Atlas 2020 treats it as native.