Urtica dioicaL.

great stinging nettle

WFO wfo-0000416616 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY In the accuracy benchmark

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Urtica dioica, photographed by Paul Cook
fig. a Paul Cook, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205550501
Urtica dioica, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. b Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205534398
Urtica dioica, photographed by Rich Cassidy
fig. c Rich Cassidy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204445988
Urtica dioica, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. d Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205538140
Urtica dioica, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. e Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204318598
Urtica dioica, photographed by Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas
fig. f Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204318792
Urtica dioica, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. g Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205273615
Urtica dioica, photographed by Ульяна Лалак
fig. h Ульяна Лалак, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205595481

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,723 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,723 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 79 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Urtica angustifolia Fisch. ex Hornem.
  • Urtica angustifolia var. sikokiana (Makino) Ohwi
  • Urtica dioecia Hill
  • Urtica dioica f. angustifolia (Fisch. ex Hornem.) Regel
  • Urtica dioica f. carpatica Zapał.
  • Urtica dioica f. czarnohorensis Zapał.
  • Urtica dioica f. hispida (Lam. ex DC.) Sagorski & Gus.Schneid.
  • Urtica dioica f. parvifolia Zapał.
  • Urtica dioica f. ramosa L.Neumann
  • Urtica dioica f. subsetosa Zapał.
  • Urtica dioica f. trilobescens (Ullep.) Sagorski & Gus.Schneid.
  • Urtica dioica lus. xiphodon (Stapf) Stapf
  • Urtica dioica prol. hispida (Lam. ex DC.) Rouy
  • Urtica dioica subsp. eu-dioica Selander
  • Urtica dioica subsp. galeopsifolia (Wierzb. ex Opiz) Chrtek
  • Urtica dioica subsp. hispida (Lam. ex DC.) Nyman
  • Urtica dioica subsp. xingjiangensis C.J.Chen
  • Urtica dioica subvar. duplicato-serrata Wedd.
  • Urtica dioica subvar. glabrata (Clem.) Wedd.
  • Urtica dioica subvar. hispida (Lam. ex DC.) Wedd.
  • Urtica dioica subvar. horrida Wedd.
  • Urtica dioica subvar. montana Wedd.
  • Urtica dioica subvar. umbrosa Wedd.
  • Urtica dioica var. androgyna Beck

and 55 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.