stinging hair

The plant gets its name from the fact it has hollow stinging hairs on its stems and leaves that inject histamine and other chemicals into people and animals that make contact with it.

From towering redwood trees and diminutive mosses to plants that have stinging hairs and poisons, the diverse range of plant life is extraordinary.

A new species of tarantula with stinging hairs has been named after which Nobel Prize-winning author?

Sometimes spikes, stinging hairs, or bad tastes make the animal ill.

| THE stinging hairs are thought to have developed as a defence against grazing animals.

These little devils have stinging hairs and can shoot out a liquid.

I won't pretend they aren't tricky to handle: Nettles are leaves with little stinging hairs.

Basal leaves 10-15 (-25) cm long; laminas narrowly ovate, 70 x 30 to 150 x 45 (to 200 x 60) mm, pinnatisect (lower lobes generally free) with (6-) 9-12 (-14) lobes on each side; lobes narrowly ovate, up to 30 x 20 mm; lobe margins grossly serrate to pinnatifid to lobulate, with 5-8 serrations or lobules on each side; lobules up to 8 mm long, distal lobules usually recurved; adaxial leaf surface sparsely setose with stinging hairs 3-5 mm long and covered with scabrid trichomes up to 1 mm long; abaxial surface setose, very densely set with scabrid (up to 1 mm long) and glochidiate trichomes (up to 0.3 mm long).

(Contact with the stinging hairs on fresh nettle can cause skin inflammation, so wear protective gloves when handling it.) For more on making your own herbal remedies, see Richo Cech's Making Plant Medicine (Horizon Herbs, 2000).

Green leafy plant that grows wild all over the world; many types have stinging hairs on their stalks and leaves.

These nocturnal beetles ate between the stinging hairs, but quite effortlessly walked among them.