25% protein, vitamins A, C, and D. Tons of micronutrients, and when cooked well, tastes amazing.
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This is one of our oldest companions, a fellow traveller of the floral kind.
It thrives upon the richness of decomposition and was often the only marker for a forgotten warriors grave.
It clothed battlefields and middens and showed us where the richest earth was to be found.
Behind its defences of histamine and acid, lies the food plant for many of our most beautiful butterflies.
It thus not only marks death, but brings forth life too.
Even for us tamed apes it remains a wild repast of great flavour and goodness.
After all this time spent with us, perhaps it deserves more than the epithet weed and to meet its end at the hand of some deadly spray.
Photo: Nettle at Saladaviciosa. Courtesy of the author.