Nettle smartweed Urtica fissa E Pritz stem leaf traditional herb medicine qian ma

Urtica pinfaensis H. Léveillé & Blin.

Herbs perennial, monoecious or rarely dioecious. Rhizomes stoloniferous. Stems branched, 40-100 cm tall; stems and petioles densely puberulent and covered with spreading, stinging hairs. Stipules greenish, interpetiolar, connate, oblong-ovate or oblong, 10-20 mm, herbaceous, 10-20-ribbed, puberulent, with cystoliths, apex obtuse, petiole 2-8 cm; leaf blade dark greenish or greenish, broadly ovate, elliptic, 5-angled, or suborbicular in outline, 5-15 × 3-14 cm, submembranous or herbaceous, 5-veined, lateral basal veins reaching distal lobes, secondary veins 3-6 each side, adaxial surface sparsely armed with stinging and setulose hairs, abaxial surface densely light greenish pubescent and with stinging hairs on veins, base truncate or cordate, margin shallowly 5-7-lobed or palmately 3-lobed (irregularly 2-4-lobed again), lobes gradually enlarged distally, deltoid or oblong, 1-5 cm, dentate-serrulate, apex acuminate or acute; cystoliths botuliform or subpunctiform on both surfaces. Inflorescences unisexual, male inflorescences usually in proximal axils, paniculate with a few branches or sometimes subspicate, to 10 cm, longer than petioles; female ones in distal axils. Male flowers pedicellate, in bud ca. 1.4 mm; perianth lobes connate below middle, sparsely puberulent. Female perianth lobes connate at base, dorsal-ventral lobes suborbicular, setulose, lateral lobes suborbicular, ca. 4 times as short as dorsal ones. Achene light brownish, broadly ovoid or subglobose, slightly compressed, ca. 1 mm, conspicuously verrucose, invested by persistent perianth lobes. Fl. Jul-Oct, fr. Sep-Nov.

Partly shady, moist places in forests, thickets, along streams, roadsides; 100-2000 m. Anhui, Fujian, SE Gansu, Guangxi, Guizhou, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, S Shaanxi, C Yunnan, Zhejiang [Vietnam].

This species is widely distributed in the temperature areas of China. It is variable in its leaf margin: populations in Hubei, Shaanxi, and Sichuan have more palmately 3-partite or 3-lobed leaf blades.