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.
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Denne historien er fra June 08, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
