Purple dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) has been blooming in southwestern Pennsylvania since early spring.

This Eurasian member of the Mint family attracts attention because it often grows in dense colonies where the plants stand together in reddish purple stacks of leaves and flowers. Some patches stand eight inches tall.

All the Mints have bilaterally symmetrical(*) flowers but the shape of this one makes the plant easy to identify — a pinkish purple hood with a unique two-lipped landing pad for bees.

Until I snapped a closeup in good light I had never seen the hairs that give it the nettle name.  Reminiscent of stinging nettle the hairs don’t sting; they’re “dead.”  Notice that the flowers have tiny hairs, too.

Purple dead nettle has a long blooming period so we’ll see it flowering until next winter.  Look for the plants now, though, because their best display occurs this month.

(photos by Kate St. John)

(*) “Bilaterally symmetrical” means it matches side-to-side, like our faces. A harder word for the same concept among flowers is zygomorphic.