Flowers - Dead Nettle

Dead Nettle is a ever-green perennial. The last photo shows the wild variety (which turns up from time to time in my garden), and the rest shows a garden variety. These flowered in May and June, but there was also a second flowering in the autumn.

Dead nettles are not connected with stinging nettles although the leaves are a bit similar. If it has a coloured or white flower, then it won't sting you! Stinging nettles have a green flower which looks completely different.

This garden variety is useful as ground cover. It will grow where practically nothing else does (in a shady corner, right by a very large tree) and the variegated leaves look attractive all year, with an added bonus of pretty pink flowers. Like all ground cover, it is a vigourous grower, but it spreads outwards in a clump, and all you have to do is trim it back from time to time.

I do have another variety of dead nettles which disappears, and then reappears...

One species of dead nettle

Another species of dead nettle

Wild dead nettle

Click on photos for large version.