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Red Dead-Nettle

Red Dead-Nettle

Lamium purpureum

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How common: Common

Alien species

Red Dead‑nettle is a small, soft‑hairy annual with pink‑purple flowers and often reddish top leaves. It is a familiar weed on disturbed ground such as gardens, vegetable plots, fields, roadsides and waste places. Despite its nettle‑like look, it does not sting.

Did you know?

  • The name “dead‑nettle” refers to the lack of stinging hairs: it won’t sting you.
  • Its seeds have a tiny food body that ants carry away, helping the plant spread.

About the species

Identification

Annual 10–30 cm tall, branching from the base. Stems upright, often reddish and square, soft‑hairy. Leaves in pairs with stalks; lower leaves more rounded, upper ones more triangular and often flushed purple; all edges shallowly and evenly toothed. Flowers sit in tight tiers at the upper leaves, forming a cone‑like cluster. Flowers pink to magenta with a hood‑like top lip. Smells unpleasant. Later splits into four small hard seeds that ants carry. Differs from Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) by having stalked upper leaves, and from Cutleaf Dead‑nettle (L. hybridum) by its not deeply cut leaves. Flowers in Finland from May to October.

Plant group

Herbaceous plants

Habitat

yards and roadsides

Flowering

May–Oct

About the habitat

Thrives on disturbed, nutrient‑rich soils: gardens and lawns, vegetable beds, farmland, pastures, soil heaps, roadsides and other waste ground. Common in southern and central Finland; rarer in the northern parts of Central Finland and at the head of the Bothnian Bay.

Sources

Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 2.5 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lamium purpureum Auvergne 2013-04-03.jpg

Text: Pinkka: Verso- ja leviäintunnistus - Kaikki leviäimet, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39468

Text: Pinkka: Verso- ja leviäintunnistus - Kaikki versot, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39468

Text: Pinkka: Laaja maatalouslajintuntemus 4 op - Koppisiemeniset, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39468

Text: Pinkka: Pieni maatalouslajintuntemus - Puuvartiset, CC BY 4.0 https://laji.fi/taxon/MX.39468

Text: Wikipedia (Finnish), CC BY-SA 4.0 https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punapeippi

See also