Looking online this weed looks to be stinging nettle.

It is not a weed. Learn it. Know it. Live it. :D

I'd say red admiral but sometimes I get fooled by question marks.

The caterpillar looks more like a question mark, at least the way they look here, but QMs don't make leaf rolls, again, at least not here. So it's probably one of the other color forms of a red admiral cat.

The plant is false nettle, but I don't know what you mean by spikey things, unless you mean the flowers/seeds. The leaves on the stinging nettle I used to have looked very different.

Sherry

False Nettle

If it has spikey needles that make her itch, it's probably actual stinging nettles. I haven't seen my nettles blooming, but those leaves look very much like my stinging nettles.

Martha

Thank you for the information. Yes, this plant I used gloves because the little spikes on the stem make your skin really itchy, but then it goes away after 15 minutes. I took some cuttings of the plant with the cats. I've never raised these before so don't really know what to expect.

Here is a closer look at the seeds heads, and on the second picture I tried to take a picture of the little spikes on the stem.

Ah, the spikes are only on the stems. I thought they were all over the leaves, too. Does anyone know if false nettles are related to stinging nettles? It seems they must be, for the butterflies to use both.

Martha

Yes, Martha, they're in the same family, Urticacea or something like that - they're just nettles without the stingers. It doesn't bother me to handle false nettles, whatever 'stingers' they may have on the stems. It DID bother me to handle stinging nettles, and false nettles really thrive here, too much so, actually - they come up everywhere from those jillions of seeds.

Sherry

Congratulations! Those red admirals are SO beautiful!

Sherry

Thank you. I released 6 in total... New thing I learned this year.