Note 2185 — BOOK XXI. AN ACCOUNT OF FLOWERS, AND THOSE USED FOR CHAPLETS MORE PARTICULARLY.
John Bostock translation
Fée remarks, that though the leaf of the nettle is furnished with numerous stings, or rather prickly hairs, it is quite wrong to look upon them as thorns, which Pliny, in the present instance, (though not in the next Chapter) appears to do. Genuine thorns, he remarks, are abortive branches, which, of course, cannot be said of the fine hairs springing from the nerves of the leaf. See B. xxii. c. 15.