Herbal

Is this what I wanted? Not sure, but it's close. Yes, I have been playing with Photoshop!

It's freezing cold and dull outside. This is the result of my looking very quickly in the garden for something which I could bring indoors to blip.

This is White Dead Nettle, Lamium alba, seen by most as an impossible weed in the garden. I see a different side to weeds. What is a weed? I think the only definition is a plant that grows in the wrong place.

Maligned because they look like Stinging Nettles, the Dead Nettle may look similar but has no stinging hairs. Unlike the Stinging Nettle, the Dead Nettle has such attractive flowers that we've bred them into varieties to grow in the garden. (modified by humans, no longer a weed) It isn't even a relative of the Stinging Nettle, it's a member of the mint family. All members of the mint family have square stems, and if you pick a Dead Nettle, you'll find that it's stem is perfectly square.

The plant has another trick. The flowers are so long that very few insects have tongues long enough to reach into the depths of the flowers. Mason bees and Bumblebees have some of the longest tongues around and as the plant flowers early in the year it is an important source of pollen for the bees who, in turn, ensure the plants are pollinated.

Not just for the bees! The leaves are edible. Try the fresh young leaves in a salad or cook them as a vegetable. I serve them with a little oil and lemon and they are yummy! There are some people who would tell you to serve the flowers as a salad. I'm all for foraged food but, to be honest, I wouldn't find the time to collect a plateful of flowers. Try them and let me know!

I won't go into the herbal medicine this evening as it's getting far too late, but it's traditionally very much a woman's aid to health, chiefly used as a uterine tonic.

It's a weed! :))