The Chemistry of Stinging Nettles

Stinging plants share needle designs

It’s not just nettles that sting. Plants discovered how to defend themselves multiple times, but whatever building blocks they use, they all share a similar design in needles.

Learning about stinging nettles the hard way is something a lot of children learn the hard way. Stinging nettles use hollow hairs, called trichomes. Are like thin brittle hypodermic needles, filled with a chemical cocktail or irritants to dissuade you from annoying the plant any further. However, it’s not just Urtica dioica that can sting.

The Chemistry of Stinging Nettles
Source: Compound Interest

Adeel Mustafa and colleagues have examined plants from five different families, put them under the microscope and examined the chemistry of the hairs themselves. What the team found is that the needles are made from different materials, but whatever the plant uses it ends up with a similar looking hair.

The needles of a stinging nettle use silica, but Loasaceae mainly use calcium carbonate and Cnidoscolus doesn’t use any minerals at all. All the physical shapes of the hairs are similar. In AmJBot, the authors say: “The stinging cells are essentially hollow from the base to the bulbous tip and break off with the slightest touch. Breakage creates a sharp edge connected to a large liquid reservoir, similar to a hypodermic needle. Pressure applied to the trichome will compress the bladder‐like base and eject the irritant fluid from the tip in an action analogous to the plunger of a hypodermic syringe.”

Mustafa and colleagues conclude: “Stinging hairsβ€”even as mechanical structuresβ€”are not simple cells with mineralized walls, but stunning examples of unique plant microengineering.” They suggest that comparative biomechanical studies would help uncover some of the details of how plants use different methods to make the same weapon. But you probably wouldn’t want it to be a hands-on study.

Dale Maylea

Dale Maylea was a system for adding value to press releases. Then he was a manual algorithm for blogging any papers that Alun Salt thinks are interesting. Now he's an AI-assisted pen name. The idea being telling people about an interesting paper NOW beats telling people about an interesting paper at some time in the future, when there's time to sit down and take things slowly. We use the pen name to keep track of what is being written and how. You can read more about our relationship with AI.

Read this in your language

The Week in Botany

On Monday mornings we send out a newsletter of the links that have been catching the attention of our readers on Twitter and beyond. You can sign up to receive it below.

@BotanyOne on Mastodon

Loading Mastodon feed...

Audio


Archive