Useful red-fruited nettle

For my nearly-Christmas post I like to find something I can associate with the festive season around this time of year. Let's go with a stinging nettle, but one with nice red berries.

As it happens, it was fruiting back in August (later sprinter). As I touched the leaves I drew back, wondering, even before I saw the family name, whether the hairs on the leaves might be irritating in some way. That had that feel to them. You just know. And look at those fine hairs near the fruits above....

Well I was wrong. The leaves didn't appear to be toxic or irritating, but the Orange Wild Rhea is a member of the nettle family, Urticaceae. So it shares much else with stinging nettles, Urtica, and the Stinging Tree, Dendrocnide.

Debregeasia longfolia is a 'Useful Tropical Plant'. From this source, and others, it seems you can: eat the fruit raw or cooked; apply the juice of the leaves to your skin to treat scabies and athritis; consume leaves to treat dysentery; plant as a quick growing pioneer plant for forest restoration (in its homeland); make twine, rope and fishing line from the bark fibre; and burn the wood for fuel. And more.

Nothing sinister about the leaves, and it appears the fruit is at least edible - although I still wouldn't try it. Orange Wild Rhea is one of perhaps six species of Debregeasia, four from Asia, one from Africa and one from Australia. This particular species is widespread as a native species from India through to China, Malaysia and Indonesia, but also now a weed elsewhere in the tropics. The Australian species, Debregeasia australis, commonly called Ramie or China Grass, is from far north Queensland.

The genus is named after after Prosper Justin de Bregeas, a First-lieutenant in the French navy and an explorer who spent some time in Asia. He is rather difficult to track down although there is a little background to him here, under the name of Justin-Prosper Debrégeas-Laurénie (1807-1870).

Flowers of the Orange Wild Rhea are female or male, and on separate plants. I only found this one pretty scrappy old flower, which looks like a male to me. It seemed to be on the same plant but this is an old shrub (or two) with many separate trunks.

The fruit, which I gather only sets fertile seed if male and female plants are present, looks like a compound berry fruit - e.g. blackberry - and is coloured orange (hence the common name) or red (as it certainly is in Melbourne Gardens).

We have three specimens, as part of island or peninsula beds on the eastern side of Melbourne Gardens. It's a plant I wasn't aware of and hadn't seen in my travels through these Gardens over the last few decades (on and off, with times away in Sydney and London).

So, Merry Christmas if that's your thing!