Stinging nettle is all over Gabriola, so I learned lots about it in a hurry soon after we moved here. It started with "Ow! What stung me?" and "how do I recognize that nasty plant so I don’t get stung again?" I wondered what point there was to stinging nettle, but after a bit of reading I knew I could use it for tea, cook it for dinner, and maybe even use the fiber.

The Gabriola Film Festival is showing a short film on nettle today. Here’s what the Film Gabriola website says about the film:

Did you know that Napolean’s armies wore uniforms spun from fibre of the nettle plant?

Tree hugger Gabriolan, David Boehm, and three fellow students enrolled in the "Activist Documentary Making Programme" at G.I.F.T.S, the Gulf Island Film Training School, on Galiano, strike green gold in this compelling first video effort. The film reveals some of the many nutritional and therapeutic uses of the humble stinging nettle and wonders why we have not exploited more fully this plant’s extraordinary potential benefits to humanity.

You’d like to see the film, but you didn’t make it to the Gabriola Film Festival? Youtube to the rescue:

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