Lamium album
Lamium album, commonly called white dead-nettle, is a flowering plant in the family Lamiaceae. It is native throughout Europe and Asia, growing in a variety of habitats from open grassland to woodland, generally on moist, fertile soils.
Description
Lamium album is a rhizomatous herbaceous perennial plant growing to tall, with green, four-angled stems. The leaves are long and broad, triangular with a rounded base, softly hairy, and with a serrated margin and a petiole up to 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 on the upper part of the stem, the individual flowers long.Phytochemistry
Various polyphenolic glycosides such as Lamalboside and Verbascoside, Tiliroside and 5-caffeoylquinic acid along with Rutoside and quercetin 3-O-glucoside and kaempferol 3-O-glucoside can be isolated from the flowers of L. album. The plant also contains the iridoid glycosides lamalbid, alboside A and B, and caryoptoside as well as the hemiterpene glucoside hemialboside.L.album was a source of chlorophyll and other plant pigments for Mikhail Tsvet, the inventor of adsorption chromatography.
Taxonomy
Lamium album was described and named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.Distribution and habitat
L. album is native to Eurasia, from Ireland in the west to Japan in the east. It has three subspecies, subsp. album in the western part of the range, subsp. crinitum in the southern part in southwest Asia, and subsp. barbatum in the far east of mainland Asia and in Japan. It is common in England, rare in the west and northern Scotland, and introduced to eastern Ireland. It is abundant in the British Isles, where it is found on roadsides, around hedges, and in abandoned places.L. album was introduced to North America, where it is widely naturalised.