Lamium album

Lamium album
White dead-nettle
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Asterids
Order: Lamiales
Family: Lamiaceae
Genus: Lamium
Species: L. album
Binomial name
Lamium album
L.

Lamium album, commonly called white nettle or white dead-nettle,[1] is a flowering plant in the family Lamiaceae, native throughout Europe and Asia, growing in a variety of habitats from open grassland to woodland, generally on moist, fertile soils.

Growth

Yellow-haired male Bombus lucorum feeding from Lamium album "dead-nettle" flowers

It is a herbaceous perennial plant growing to 50-100 cm tall, with green, four-angled stems. The leaves are 3-8 cm long and 2-5 cm broad, triangular with a rounded base, softly hairy, and with a serrated margin and a petiole up to 5 cm long; like many other members of the Lamiaceae, they appear superficially similar to those of the Stinging nettle Urtica dioica but do not sting, hence the common name "dead-nettle". The flowers are white, produced in whorls ('verticillasters') on the upper part of the stem, the individual flowers 1.5-2.5 cm long. The flowers are visited by many types of insects, but mostly by bees.[2]

Cultivation and uses

It was introduced to North America, where it is widely naturalised.

The young leaves are edible, and can be used in salads or cooked as a vegetable.

Bees, especially bumble bees are attracted to the flowers which are a good source of early nectar and pollen, hence the plant is sometimes called the Bee Nettle.[3]

Habitat

In British Isles: roadsides and hedges and waste-places.[4][5]

Distribution

Common in England, rare in Scotland and introduced in Ireland.[6]

Chemistry

Two phenylpropanoid glycosides, lamalboside (2R-galactosylacteoside) and acteoside, the flavonol p-coumaroylglucoside, tiliroside, 5-caffeoylquinic acid (chlorogenic acid), along with rutoside and quercetin and kaempferol 3-O-glucosides can be isolated from the flowers of L. album.[7] The plant also contains the iridoid glycosides lamalbid, alboside A and B, and caryoptoside[8] as well as the hemiterpene glucoside hemialboside.[9]

In folklore

A distillation of the flowers is reputed "to make the heart merry, to make a good colour in the face, and to make the vital spirits more fresh and lively."[10]

Notes

  1. ↑ "USDA GRIN Taxonomy".
  2. ↑ Van Der Kooi, C. J.; Pen, I.; Staal, M.; Stavenga, D. G.; Elzenga, J. T. M. (2015). "Competition for pollinators and intra-communal spectral dissimilarity of flowers" (PDF). Plant Biology. doi:10.1111/plb.12328.
  3. ↑ botanical.com - A Modern Herbal | Nettles
  4. ↑ Parnell, J. and Curtis, T. 2012. Webb's An Irish Flora. p.360 Cork University Press. ISBN 978-185918-4783
  5. ↑ Hackney, P. (Ed) 1992. Stewart and Corry's Flora of the North-east of Ireland. Institute of Irish Studies and The Queen's University of Belfast. ISBN 0-85389-446-9
  6. ↑ Clapham, A.R., Tutin, T.G. and Warburg, E.F. Excursion Flora of the British Isles. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-04656-4
  7. ↑ Phenylpropanoid esters from Lamium album flowers. Jaromir Budzianowski and Lutoslawa Skrzypczak, Phytochemistry, March 1995, Volume 38, Issue 4, Pages 997–1001, doi:10.1016/0031-9422(94)00727-B
  8. ↑ Iridoid glucosides from Lamium album. Søren Damtoft, Phytochemistry, January 1992, Volume 31, Issue 1, Pages 175–178, doi:10.1016/0031-9422(91)83030-O
  9. ↑ Hemialboside, a hemiterpene glucoside from Lamium album. Søren Damtoft and Søren Rosendal Jensen, Phytochemistry, July 1995, Volume 39, Issue 4, Pages 923–924, doi:10.1016/0031-9422(95)00085-L
  10. ↑ Mrs M. Grieve (1931). "NETTLE, WHITE DEAD". A Modern Herbal. Botanical.com.

External links

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