You are right to suspect that a floodplain woodland,long ago probably did not have a blanket of stinging nettle, it may have had a more diverse understory.

One thing you might experiment with is doing a controlled burn on a small area (in the fall or the spring)... Then monitor that area and watch for any changes.

The story has it that Urtica dioica was introduced from Europe by the colonists. The foliage is edible in the early Spring.
The forrested wetland that you describe sounds like it has been trashed. Perhaps the deer ate everything else and left the nettle. Ferns, sedges and understory shrubs are expected to be found under those conditions. I would expect to find impatiens, also some scutellarias and monardas to name a few.
Sam

Dirtgirl,

my grandparents owned (now my parents) more than 80 acres of Appalachian Cove forest. There were some stinging nettles there when I was a child. I remember getting into them with bare legs and running to soak in the creek for relief :-) Now more than 40 years later, there are many more nettles. Plants i remember from childhood include touch-me-nots, monarda, blue lobelia, lettuce saxifrage (S. micranthidifolia), Virginia waterleaf, allium tricorne, dicentras, Christmas ferns, black cohosh, blue cohosh, etc.
I don't think it would hurt a thing if you got rid of those stinging nettles! Oh, the reason I remember all these plants (other than the fact that they are still there) is that my grandma was a plant woman. She knew them all.
VG

hi all...sorry I'm just now getting back to this. Thanks for the input. Another question: is there an easy way to tell wood nettle (Laportea canadensiis) from U dioica? Are the stinging bristles present on the undersides of the leaves in stinging nettle also present in wood nettle? The way it's phrased in Audubon's makes it sound as though they are absent in Wood nettle....
The actual floodplain here gets scoured right down to the treeroots when the water gets up. In '83 when the big flood hit, we had 11 inches of rain in a little less than 36 hours, and there was about 8 feet of water from bluff to bluff. When the waters subside here after a flood, all leaf litter is completely gone. It seems unnatural to see a forest floor swept bare like that.
In the spring the chaos begins: dogtooth violet, bloodroot, larkspur, dutchman's breeches, trout lily, virginia bluebells, a host of violets. The mayapples form their thickets. The jewelweed is sprouting. THere were the early bloomers-the pawpaws along the creek itself as well as the spicebush and the bladddernut bushes. THe morel seekers know the way to my place! I did indeed begin controlled something like 8 years back and watched the ginseng and goldenseal return. The solomon's seal and green dragon arums are knee high in places, and the jack-in-the-pulpit is doing well. And both cardinal flower and great blue lobelias are here. Granted , most of this commotion is located on the slightly higher ground, but a good deal of it is still right there on the flats. Why does it give way to such a monocultural summer?? The burning is extremely difficult and next to impossible to do in the bottoms...most of the dry leaf litter, as I mentioned, is carried away by floods and wedged in drifts around the bases of birch and oaks, so getting a fire to run is frustrating. Maybe one good year of breaking the cycle would show me what's waiting under all that stinging shade...
Sam md mentioned too many deer...I have seen those situations before, almost parklike, with nothing in between the ground and higher first branch. We do have too many deer in our township, but so far we don't have a problem with overbrowsing like the urban areas do. Coyotes take their fill of fawns and hunters follow suit with the adults. I finally saw my first bobcat this spring so things are improving.

Just seems like something is not quite right with a carpet of nettle.

Sounds like you have a lot of spring ephemerals and plants that just aren't going to compete well with the nettles once the summer really gets going. Since burning isn't working, maybe cutting back the nettles before they set seed will help. This might not completely kill the nettles but it should increase space available to your natives. My guess is that the cutting of the nettles will have to be repeated for a few years. Sometimes, after the first increase of sunlight from cutting back invasives, more invasives pop up so you might have more work in short run but things then improve. Has the flooding always been that severe or is it a function of increased runoff from other areas?

I commiserate regarding the nettles. I have been trying to reduce my area of the woodland nettles, which is a native, but very painful. The main difference between the two types is the large almost heart shape leave on the woodland when it is fully open. Where I have established control, I am seeing plenty of natives that aren't painful. One person on the forum asked why I hated nettles. I don't hate them, but I too wonder if they were this prolific. I understand that the native americans ate these as a cooked green. Maybe that kept them more in check.

Hi Just came upon this thread and thought I would add a note. My husband and I ate dinner recently at a "working farm" in New York. They cook and serve their own farm raised meat and local greens and vegetables. On the menu were some interesting items, including pasta made with stinging nettle. I asked the waiter how it is prepared and he said they boil and grind the nettles and somehow incorporate them into the pasta dough. My husband ordered it, and the pasta was very green and delicious. They also had a dish with Lamb's Quarters as an ingredient. Interesting menu to say the least.

This useful illustration from the Flora of North America illustrates a few native (Urtica chamaedryoides, U. dioicia subsp. gracilis, Laportea canadensis) and nonnative (U. dioicia subsp. dioicia) nettle species and subspecies. Hesperocnide tenella and U. dioicia subsp. holosericea are native to the western US. The hairs on the stems are different in all these species.
Also, L. canadensis (wood nettle) has wide, alternate leaves while U. dioicia (stinging nettle) has thin, opposite leaves.

Here is a link that might be useful: Flora of North America illustration