Lamium purpureum | purple dead-nettle
How to grow purple dead-nettle, a gentle bee friendly wildflower
One of the hardest choices I faced when writing my first book Wild about Weeds was deciding whether to include white dead nettle or red dead nettle as one of the top 50 wild plants. The limit of 50 set by the cost of printing a set number of pages. In the end I opted for white dead nettle because it had received so little love from other gardening books and I had a lot to say about it. But in the back of my mind I felt bad for giving its purple relative only a little side mention. So today I want to rectify that.
What to say about this wonderful plant? First let’s address the name, why do people call it red when it is clearly purple-pink, even the scientific name got it right: ‘purpureum’ means purple. Really we should correct this and call it purple dead-nettle, which I have done in the title of this page.
Dead-nettles receive their name because they look a bit like stinging nettles but have no sting; the sting is ‘dead’. They aren’t related to stinging nettles at all, they sit in the lamium family with sages such as flowering salvia, rosemary, edible sage and mint. You can see the relationship if you look closely at the flowers, which have a similar lipped tube growing in whorls around stems over a long period of time.
Indigenous to all of Europe, the Mediterranean, right across Siberia, it’s a well travelled plant.
Need to know information about purple dead-nettle
Purple dead-nettle is a tidy little plant that is easy to spot. It grows to about 30cm wide, and a little shorter. It likes to grow in slightly disturbed ground, where it grabs at the opportunity to grow with less competition because it isn’t good at competing against stronger plants.
This is useful to know for gardeners because it explains why it pops up around other garden plants, where you might have hoed or removed the likes of couch grass, dock and dandelion. We have most purple dead-nettle plants on our allotment for instance, where soil is kept bare for vegetables. This also tells us where it prefers to grow if you’d like to encourage it.
Much like poppies, cornflower and foxgloves, it needs some open areas of soil to get going. Once it does get going, it seems able to then defend its spot for the season.
It’s a plant that prefers growing in part-shade with some direct sunlight, so woodland edges or between larger plants in full sun. This trait is really useful because it means you can grow it between your plants in borders and it will act as a ground cover helping to stop other plants you might not want self sowing and growing. I use pink and purple a lot in gardens, so the more purple dead-nettle the better!
Propagating purple dead-nettle
You will be able to grow purple dead-nettle from seed if you can collect them but its root system is weak and thread-like, making it hard to handle or transplant. The best technique is simply to find some already growing in your garden and then protect that plant, encouraging it to self-sow by itself. Once you have a few plants happily growing around, they should establish a constant population every year.
Downsides to purple dead-nettle
The only downside to purple dead-nettle is linked to its weak root system. It isn’t a vigorous plant and it particularly suffers in dry soil in summer, when its ultra-fine roots struggle to draw up water and the plant can become covered in mildew. This doesn’t really affect the plant, though some people don’t like the look of mildew. I just wouldn’t worry about it.
Other than that, there aren’t any other downsides to purple dead-nettle, it never takes over and is easy to pull out where you don’t want it. It boggles the mind how it became known as a problem “weed” in the first place. All making it one of the best wildflowers to encourage in gardens.
How useful is purple dead-nettle for wildlife?
The answer to this is: very. Like so many of the plants garden writers of old labelled “weeds”, purple dead-nettle flower for absolutely ages. In fact, in sheltered gardens you’ll find it in flower all year! Like all sage family plants, pollinators love them, especially the longer tongued species and bumblebees.
Because it flowers in winter months, it makes it an important food source for winter active as well as early spring or late autumn wild bee species. It is also food for the caterpillars of a number of moth species.
Is purple dead-nettle edible?
Yes, its young leaves are edible though I have never tried them because the plants are often so small, it wouldn’t make for a substantial crop!
Using purple dead-nettle in design
I love encouraging it everywhere, between larger plants, and especially in woodland style planting in part-shade. It’s here that it looks its most lustrous alongside ferns, brunnera, woodland sedge luzula and grass melica. It looks beautiful at this time of year alongside the blue of wild bluebells. The gentle pink-purple never dominates, adding its soft, warm colour into the overall planting.
Pretty little plant, don't know that I've ever seen it, but in BC Canada, here on the west coast, it's considered an invasive plant which can spread through massive seed dispersal as well as the roots growing underground, starting new plants along the route. Interesting.
I have always loved this retiring little plant and, thanks to you, I now know so much more about it - thank you!