Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Its botanical genus name comes from a Latin verb meaning to burn, a warning the plant makes good on the instant skin touches it. In dry summer heat the inward-curled stamens of its minute male flowers snap straight and fling a faint puff of pollen into the breeze. The Latin species epithet means of two houses, because male and female flowers are carried on entirely separate plants. Minute green wind-pollinated flowers dangle in long, slender, branching strings from the {axils} of the upper leaves, never in tight round balls. Paired opposite each other, the coarsely {toothed}, {ovate} leaves taper from a heart-shaped base to a drawn-out point along a four-angled stem. A vigorous {perennial}, it spreads by creeping underground {rhizomes} into dense colonies 3 to 7 feet (0.9 to 2 m) tall. Its foliage is the main nursery for red admiral caterpillars, which fold themselves leafy shelters to feed inside. Retted and stripped, its tough stem fibers have been twisted into cord and woven into cloth for thousands of years. Hollow, glass-like stinging {trichomes} sheathing the stems and leaves snap off at a touch and inject histamine and acetylcholine, raising burning welts. Foragers boil the young spring tops into a nutritious potherb once heat kills the sting, yet a bare-legged brush through a patch leaves the burning rash behind its blunt common name.

Accepted Answer

Urtica dioica

Name That Plant #041