Nettle

“Ortiga (Urtica dioica, nettle). Tea for the joints, young leaves in soup. Diuretic in quantity, same caution.”

“Brandnetel (Urtica dioica). Spring nettle soup and tea, picked with gloves. Oral tradition, no written source found. Food and a mild tea. Caution: nettle tea in quantity acts as a water pill and shifts lithium and potassium.”

“Nettle with garlic: young nettle (kopriva, urzică) picked with gloves, boiled, then sautéed with garlic, the broth drunk too. In Kosovo nettle's top use, in all three groups, was against "weak blood". Beside it: beetroot "to purify the blood", dock, fat hen (loboda) in burek, horsetail tea as "purifying".”

“Nettle (Urtica dioica). Urzică, kopriva, hithi, yakici. Baba's signature spring plant. Roma study, high frequency: "purifying (kidneys, lungs, blood)", iron, dandruff rinse. Kosovo: "weak blood" in all three groups, also piles, flu, eczema, bronchitis. Caution: acts as a water pill, careful with lithium and water pills. Blood in the urine, fever with pain in the side, or a man over 50 with bladder trouble: not for nettle.”

“Spring. The hungry end of winter, then the birch sap. The first nettles go into green shchi, a spring source of vitamin C that once kept scurvy away. Cheremsha, the wild garlic of Siberia (Allium victorialis and its cousins), is gathered in bulk, eaten fresh and salted for the winter. One line: wild garlic has poisonous lookalikes, in Europe lily of the valley and autumn crocus, so he never sends a stranger to pick it. The ice on the lake breaks up with a sound like cannon.”

“Shchi. Cabbage soup, fresh in summer, from sauerkraut in winter, and in spring the green shchi of young nettles.”