THE FOLKLORE OF PLANTS: Dead Nettle

Lisa Karen Miller

          Dead Nettle, or henbit, is considered by most of us to be a nuisance garden weed, but chickens adore it, and we can eat it too.  A member of the mint family, Lamium amplexicaule tastes like a peppery spinach, and can be eaten raw or cooked. It is packed with vitamins, iron, and antioxidants.  Our ancestors ate it for centuries.

          John Gerard, in his 1597 Herball, says, “The floures are baked with sugar as Roses are, which is called Sugar roses: as also the distilled water of them, which is used to make the heart merry, to make a good colour in the face, and to refresh the vitall spirits.”

          Margaret Grieve, in her 1931 A Modern Herbal, tells us that the entire plant is astringent, and can be used to stop hemorrhages. Dipping cotton wool in a tincture of the plant can stop bleeding – a sort of primitive styptic.   

          White Dead Nettle, Lamium album, bears white flowers that provide nectar for bees from early spring to winter. Its young leaves can be boiled as a vegetable or added to soups.

          Their flowers are always in twos, because they are the shoes of pixies – they’ve left them outside their little houses to keep the floors clean. If you pluck a blossom and turn it upside down, you’ll see a tiny shoe with a pointed toe. They also have a British common name of “Cinderella’s Slippers.”

          The nectar of this variety can alleviate the pain of Stinging Nettle, Urtica dioica.  Dead Nettle is so named to distinguish it from this plant, which it resembles, minus the sting. Just squeeze some onto the spot, and the pain will disappear in seconds. The nectar can also be drunk just like honeysuckle – pull the end out of the flower, and suck out the nectar.  Heavenly, or so I’m told.

          Spotted Dead Nettle, Lamium maculatum, is sold as an ornamental groundcover and has purple flowers that attract pollinators.

          We are probably most familiar with Purple Dead Nettle, Lamium purpurea, in Kentucky – a plant that springs up whenever soil is disturbed and you’ve no other groundcover in place.  It has purplish leaves towards the top, and small white flowers.  The leaves and flowers can be dried and used to make tea. It is diuretic, astringent, and tonic.  Its leaves can be applied to cuts in the skin.

          This plant with a ghoulish name has actually been a friend to mankind and nature for centuries.  

© Copyright 2023 Lisa Karen Miller