FoI
Northern Nettle
Share Foto info
Northern Nettle
ative Photo: Prashant Awale
Common name: Northern Nettle, Himalayan Nettle
Botanical name: Urtica hyperborea    Family: Urticaceae (Nettle family)
Synonyms: Urtica kunlunshanica

Northern Nettle is an undershrub, up to 50 cm tall, velvet-hairy, sparingly covered with stinging hairs. Leaves are carried 0.4-2 cm long stalks. Leaf bade is ovate or broadly ovate-round, 1-4.5 cm long, 1-2.5 cm broad, somewhat heart-shape or flat at the base, margin toothed, tip pointed. Stipules are ovate-oblong, fused, 4-6 mm long. Flowers are borne in panicle of cymes in leaf axils, longer than leaf-stalks. Flowers are greenish-purple. Sepals circular, not armed hairy, enlarged in fruit. Seed-pods are oblong-ovate, about 2 mm long. Northern Nettle is found in Pakistan, Indian Himalayas, Tibet, from 3000-6000 m. Flowering: May-August.

Identification credit: Prashant Awale
Photographed enroute to Khardung la, Ladakh.
• Is this flower misidentified? If yes,