Lamium

A very useful and pretty group of plants, many of them excellent ground cover, others more upright in form. Flowers are reasonably large, in whorls around the stem Colours ranging from white, pink and yellow. Attractive in flower and often equally attractive in foliage. Good for a shady part of the garden, but some of the ground cover forms will take a sunny spot, especially as they can weave and hide under other perennials and shrubs.

As with most members of the mint family, the flowers of dead-nettles are very attractive to visiting pollinators. Those with smaller flowers, often annuals, e.g. L. purpureum are favoured by hairy-footed flower-bees and smaller bumblebees. The smaller, summer-flowering ones e.g. L. maculatum by honeybees, and the larger-flowered ones, especially L. orvala, by bumblebees throughout the summer. The leaves are relatively palatable to the caterpillers of many common garden moths. There are however some concerns regarding L. galeobdolon: the native wild form is now less widespread than the non-native variegated forms, and wild populations are becoming genetically polluted, the problem being that there are minor differences in flower morphology as well that might affect its place in the ecology of natural habitats. To an extent the variegated cat is out of the bag, but it would be prudent not to grow non-native forms close to ancient woodland.