With fairy shoes in every flower

It might be common and unremarkable, but the deadnettle has been a powerful and effective country remedy for centuries, discovers Ian Morton

- Ian Morton

CROUCHING along hedgerows, field margins, grass verges, in disturbed soil and on waste ground, it barely catches the eye. Its modest flowers, although among the earliest to appear and the last to quit the year, cannot compete for attention either in colour or display with bolder and brighter springtime blooms. It is no more than a wayside weed and its very name seems to condemn it: deadnettle.

However, names are deceptive and this unassuming plant is not even a nettle—it’s a herb, a member of the Lamiaceae family that includes mints, lavender, rosemary, sage and basil. Its misnomer derives from the jagged leaf shape, which it probably developed to dissuade grazing animals and leaf-eating insects by mimicking the botanically unrelated stinging nettle.

As do so many wild plants that are now overlooked, the deadnettle has history. The first of this species to flower, Lamium purpureum, presents its modest mauve bloom clusters and purplish leaves as early as February and remains until November. Its slightly more prominent relative L. album, with white flowers and green foliage, follows in March and lasts until December—and it is this variety that commands the bigger reputation. In the distant days when Christian festivals punctuated the rural year, it was known as ‘white archangel’ because it was traditionally observed around May 8, the Feast of the Apparition, the day the Catholic church dedicated to the Archangel Michael to commemorate his reported 5th-century appearance on Mount Gargano, in southern Italy. Alternative local names included ‘blind’, ‘dumb’ or ‘dead’ nettle—not a condemnation, but a celebration of its innocuous nature— and ‘sweet nettle’, which came from the practice, common among rural children, of sucking the flowers for their nectar.