Japanese name: ムカゴイラクサ（珠芽刺草、零余子刺草） Scientific name:Laportea bulbifera
[Overview]
A perennial 40–80 cm tall, found in damp places such as along streams in mountain forests.
The whole plant bears stinging hairs, and touching them causes intense pain.
The roots are thickened and spindle-shaped.
The leaves are simple and alternate, 5–15 cm long and 3–6 cm wide, narrowly ovate to ovate-elliptic, with a pointed tip that is not tail-like.
The leaf margin has even teeth.
The leaves have long petioles and bear bulbils in the axils, so the plant propagates by bulbils as well as by seed.
There are male and female flowers; in the upper part of the stem are long-stalked, compound cyme-like female inflorescences 4–7 cm long, and in the lower part are stalkless, panicle-like male inflorescences 4–7 cm long.
Both male and female flowers are small; male flowers are greenish white with 4–5 tepals and the same number of stamens as tepals.
Female flowers are pale green with 4 tepals, and the stigma is long and linear.
The fruit is an achene, a distorted ellipse about 3 mm long, and 2 of the tepals enlarge and persist.
[Uses]
The young shoots are used as a wild vegetable.
