from the December 13, 2009 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
COW-ITCH
Here and there in the forest where it's particularly protected from the sun and wind -- where it's moist and shadowy -- you find shrubs or small trees with thick, brittle branches and broad, veiny, shallowly sawtooth-margined leaves, such as is shown above.

Over in Belize the Creole-English speakers call that Cow-Itch, and if you touch it you'll know why, for the whole plant is covered with stinging hairs. In the Yucatan they often call it Ortiga, which is a name given to all kinds of plants with stinging hairs. It's URERA BACCIFERA, and if you've noticed the diffuse flower cluster like a halo around the thick branch to the left of the leaf in

the picture, and you know your Northern plants, you may have already figured out that Cow-Itch is a member of the Nettle Family, the Urticaceae. The flower cluster with its many branches and rebranches is very much like that of the North's stinging nettles. A close-up of the inflorescence is below:

Note the pale, sharp, stinging hairs present even on the inflorescence's purple stems. The white globes are fleshy fruits reminiscent of mistletoe fruits. The tiny flowers at the tips of branches are unisexual, the plants coming in male and female types.

This is a typical plant of the hot, humid American tropics, found from Mexico to Peru and Argentina. In Mexico the Aztecs used to make paper from the inner bark, while in Venezuela indigenous people boiled the root for a tea to eliminate kidney stones.