awkward botany

If you know anything about stinging nettle, you know not to touch it. Its stems and leaves come equipped with needle-like hairs that easily detach from the plant and pierce into bare skin. The real rub is that these needle-like hairs also act like hypodermic needles, injecting a combination of chemicals into your skin resulting in an obnoxious itching sensation that can last ...

When garden plants go weedy, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve escaped the boundaries of our yards and invaded nearby natural areas or uncultivated spaces. While this is a concern for a significant number of ornamental plants, sometimes the weediness of a garden plant is experienced within the very yard or garden it was planted in. For some of us, such a plant’s weediness c...

Prunella vulgaris can be found all over the place. It has also been used to treat just about everything. What else would you expect from a plant known commonly as self-heal, heal-all, all-heal, and woundwort? The medicinal value of this plant has been appreciated for centuries across its expansive range, and studies evaluating its medicinal use continue today. Being ...