Dead Nettle

Red Dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum)

One of the things I love about living in England is the fact that there are flowers blooming all 12 months of the year. Granted, things are pretty thin on the ground at the moment, but with just a little persistence, you can find blooms somewhere. Right now, Red Dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum) is flowering in the garden. It's a common and widespread weed that blooms all year round in mild winters, making it a very important plant for early pollinators. It's called "dead-nettle" because it lacks the sting of the true nettles, which have similarly-shaped leaves.

Red Dead-nettle is a member of the mint family. It's an annual, but it regularly overwinters — and produces copious amounts of seed. It's common in arable fields (which we have in abundance locally) and disturbed areas (roadside verges, railway lines, waste ground, etc.), and we have scores of plants sprinkled across the garden. Its flowers are particularly attractive to long-tongued insects like bumblebees and mason bees, and the caterpillars of several moth species (Angle Shades, Garden Tiger, and White Ermine) feed on its leaves. I haven't seen any bees on them in the past few weeks, but later in the spring, the Red-tailed and Buff-tailed bumblebees will be regular visitors. I can't wait!