Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds.

Time of bloom: July to September.

Seed-time: September until cut off by frost.

Range: Quebec and Ontario to Minnesota, southward to Florida and Kansas. Habitat: Moist soil; waste places.

Stems six inches to two feet or more in height, erect, round, smooth or sometimes slightly hairy, simple or with few branches.

Leaves long ovate to lance-shaped, pointed, three-nerved, sharply toothed, much resembling those of the nettles but without stinging hairs; petioles long, slender, smooth. Flowers may be dioecious or the two kinds intermixed on the same plant, more often the latter, but in either case they are in densely crowded, elongated, axillary spikes, often leafy at the tips; the sterile ones very like those of the True Nettle, but the fertile ones having an urn-shaped persistent calyx enclosing the ovary, and later enfolding the ripened achenes. (Fig. 51.)

Means of control the same as for common Nettles. As they are without stings, small areas may be readily hand-pulled.