Urtica chamaedryoides (heartleaf nettle)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Urtica chamaedryoides, photographed by saltyhiker — fig. a saltyhiker, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205232801

Urtica chamaedryoides, photographed by Ryan Sorrells — fig. b Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191168146

Urtica chamaedryoides, photographed by Brian Finzel — fig. c Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 186081980

Urtica chamaedryoides, photographed by Josiah Londerée — fig. d Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 182314270

Urtica chamaedryoides, photographed by Diana Foreman — fig. e Diana Foreman, CC0 1.0 / obs. 126407500

Urtica chamaedryoides, photographed by Elias — fig. f Elias, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 123138758

Urtica chamaedryoides, photographed by Robert Webster — fig. h Robert Webster, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 121811996

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 26 botanical countries

Native distribution of Urtica chamaedryoides, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alabama	ALA	NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas	ARK
Florida	FLA
Georgia	GEO
Illinois	ILL
Kansas	KAN
Kentucky	KTY
Louisiana	LOU
Mexico Central	MXC
Mexico Gulf	MXG
Mexico Northeast	MXE
Mexico Northwest	MXN
Mexico Southeast	MXT
Mexico Southwest	MXS
Mississippi	MSI
Missouri	MSO
North Carolina	NCA
Ohio	OHI
Oklahoma	OKL
South Carolina	SCA
Tennessee	TEN
Texas	TEX
Argentina Northeast	AGE	SOUTHERN AMERICA
Argentina Northwest	AGW
Bolivia	BOL
Guatemala	GUA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 54 in flower of 101 examined

15%

48%

64%

71%

80%

33%

Proportion of examined Urtica chamaedryoides in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	2	13	15%	4% to 42%
Feb	12	25	48%	30% to 67%
Mar	21	33	64%	47% to 78%
Apr	10	14	71%	45% to 88%
May	4	5	80%	38% to 96%
Jun	3	3	too few examined
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	0	0	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	0	2	too few examined
Dec	2	6	33%	10% to 70%

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Urtica chamaedryoides observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 54 of 101 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 21 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

Urtica alba Raf.
Urtica aureliana Riddell
Urtica berlandiera Blume
Urtica bovista Riddell ex Wedd.
Urtica chamaedryoides f. hygrophila Hauman
Urtica chamaedryoides f. xerophila Hauman
Urtica chamaedryoides var. angustifolia Wedd.
Urtica chamaedryoides var. genuina Wedd.
Urtica chamaedryoides var. latifolia Wedd.
Urtica chamaedryoides var. orizabae (Liebm.) Wedd.
Urtica chamaedryoides var. parvifolia Wedd.
Urtica chamaedryoides var. runyonii Correll
Urtica glandulifera Liebm.
Urtica gracilescens Blume
Urtica gracilis Raf.
Urtica minutifolia Griseb.
Urtica orizabae Liebm.
Urtica propinqua Liebm.
Urtica purpurascens Nutt.
Urtica stachydifolia Kunth & C.D.Bouché
Urtica verna Raf.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.