Chestnut Herbal School

nettles

A grazing tray with Stinging Nettles Pate.

Stinging Nettles Medicinal Benefits & My Famous Nettles Pâté Recipe

The emerald nettles queen reigns over the herbal realms with vim and vigor. The leaves of this legendary herb are packed with vitamins, minerals, and chlorophyll, and this vitality infuses into nutritive herbal teas, vinegars, and medicinal foods. It’s true that nettles (Urtica dioica, Urticaceae) wears a crown of nearly invisible silver prickles, primed to sting any who might dare to trespass, but the sting is disarmed when the leaves are dried or cooked.

A basket of foraged stinging nettles.

The Best Wild Foods and Medicinals for Beginning Foragers and Wildcrafters

When I first began foraging my own food and medicine, I focused on a particular array of plentiful, generous, and nourishing plants—the wild weeds, the common flora, and the invasives. These plants are some of our most superb medicinal allies and nutrient-dense wild foods. And these feral botanicals continue to be my main squeezes: non-native, “weedy” medicinals and wild foods are the most sustainable options out there.

A person harvests wild garlic mustard.

Foraging for Wild Edibles and Herbs: Sustainable and Safe Gathering Practices

We herbalists have a unique take on the commonest of herbs: instead of dismissing them as mundane or maddening, we choose to embrace wily botanicals with enchantment and enterprise. These medicinal and edible weeds—vulgar villains to most—are the herbalists’ beloveds. This alchemical perspective, transforming the unplanned and uninvited into a veritable treasure, is a handy approach in life that needn’t be limited to weeds.