Well, my goal for this weekend was to get out for a hike. I had my sights set on doing something/anything so that I was outside enjoying the long holiday weekend. So after 2 days of working on rearranging the office, and after sleeping in a bit later this morning, I jumped in my Jeep and headed to Carderock. So easy to get to up at the end of the GW Pkwy. I walked along Billy Goat Trail and went off trail to check out the sounds of a waterfall and brushed against something. Immediately feeling the sting of prickers or thorns that I could not even see. I kept hiking, but noticed swelling on the inside of my elbow. I kept checking to see how this sensation might progress. I wasnt feeling any shortness of breath so figured I was ok. Still, on my way back I wanted to get a sample, just in case. So back to where I came through the brush and I looked for a plant that was elbow high, with thorns. Finally, I found it and just to be sure, I brushed my finger against very very slightly. Doh! so I grabbed a leaf from a different tree to use as a mitt and tried to take a stalk. Again Doh! those thorns went right through it. so both the tips of my grabbing fingers are tingling and stinging. I didnt have anything with me, but picked up 2 sticks and made a 'tool' that plucked the top off of one of the plants and used them to carry it back on the return to my Jeep.
My fingers are still tingling six hours later! I described it to my neighbors like stinging nettles, you know, jelly fish. Did a google search and lo and behold there it was. The green, leafy culprit with the clear, tiny, prickly thorns!
Urtica dioica, better known as the stinging nettle!
So read up and learn how to recognize this beastly little plant so that you can be sure to avoid it on the Billy Goat Trail! 
Interestingly, the articles I read say it is used for soup! yeah right! in all my years in the woods, it is funny I have never come across this before. How interesting this has been. But, I am still tingling!
From the Telegraph in the UK
Readers' Recipes: NETTLES
Tumbling in the nettle patch was a regular feature of my childhood, so the idea of eating those nasty rash-inducing weeds seems strange. But stinging nettles have been eaten for hundreds of years - in dock pudding, nettle beer and soup. They are a spring food; summer nettles are too coarse ...when cooked, nettles wilt down like spinach and all trace of the sting vanishes. They have a sweetish, herby flavour and are, in fact, related to garden mint.
Choose a patch away from busy roads and where they won't have been sprayed with weedkiller. Put on rubber gloves and collect the top leaves of young plants that are, ideally, no more than a foot tall. Reject entirely any that are in flower; they are too old. Wash your haul thoroughly and strip away all the stalks, which are so fibrous they used to be made into cloth. Now you're ready to cook.
and from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinging_nettle
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