The following article is meant for educational purposes only. The writer strongly encourages any individual considering foraging on their own to check with a local expert who is knowledgeable about wild edibles and their dangerous look-alikes in your specific area.

Henbit vs. Purple Dead Nettle

If you’re looking at getting into wild foraging or natural medicine, early spring is the time of year to start! This is when some of the best forage fodder starts popping up. In this article, we will be discussing how to identify two great options for beginners to get out and start collecting: purple dead nettle and henbit.

Identification

You can see from the above picture that there are some striking similarities between both of these plants. Both are part of the mint family (Lamiaceae), so they have square-shaped stems, similar flowers, and somewhat similar looking leaves. As such, they are often confused for one another. Luckily, they are both edible, so if you happen to make this mistake, it won’t be a lethal one. But my hope is that after reading this article and seeing the detailed images provided, you will easily be able to tell these wonderful “weeds” apart.

Henbit in its natural habitat (Original Image)

Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule)

Let’s start with henbit. Henbit is considered a winter annual, meaning that its seeds germinate in the fall, the plant lives through winter, produces flowers and seeds in the spring, and then dies away. It has a fibrous root system that grows out from a shallow taproot and can grow as tall as 16 inches (~40 cm).

Fibrous roots of henbit (Original Image)

Stem and Leaves

Henbit uprooted (Original Image)

The square shaped stem of henbit is slightly fuzzy and sometimes green, but often takes on a reddish or purplish hue.The leaves are also slightly fuzzy and have an overall roundish to heart or kidney shape and have deep lobes that look like rounded teeth. They are palmately veined and are arranged oppositely in pairs on the stem. Near the bottom of the stem, the leaves extend outward on smaller stem-like petioles, but as you near the middle of the plant, the leaves begin to attach directly to the main stem and often fuse together making it appear as if there is one leaf surrounding the entire stem. Leaves also get closer together as you move up the stem, making it look like a small bunch of leaves at the very tip.

Stem in cross section. The square stem is indicative of plants in the mint family. (Original Image)

Kidney shaped leaf exhibiting toothed edges and palmate venation (Original Image)

Leaves near the bottom of the plant are attached to the stem by smaller petioles. (Original Image)

About halfway up the stem, the leaves begin to attach directly to the main stem without a petiole. (Original Image)

leaf attach.jpg

Close up of direct leaf attachment (Original Image)

Flowers

Henbit forms tiny whitish pink to lavender or purple flowers in whorls on the upper leaves. The two lipped flowers are a bit orchid-like, with a long, slender tube extending upward from the leaf axil or from the tip of the stem itself. The upper lip terminates in a hood-like shape while the lower lip terminates in two rounded lobes that hang downward.

flower attachment.jpg Flowers in a whorl arrangement (Original Image)

The top surface of the flower petals are usually whitish with purplish spots and a darker lavender or purple outline. The flowers are covered inside and out with tiny hairs.

Henbit Flowers Up Close (Original Image)

After being pollinated, each flower will produce 4 tiny, egg-shaped, nut-like seeds that are brown with white spots. If you’re lucky enough to get to them before they fall to the ground, the seeds can be found neatly tucked away in the calyx of the flower.

Henbit seeds tucked away in the calyx (Original Image)

Favored Habitat

Henbit is a cool weather plant, thriving in the early spring. It prefers cool moist areas that have been recently disturbed, and it even does well in shady spots. That is why you are likely to find it growing in your garden or in your lawn in areas where the grass is sparse where it quickly fills in the empty space. Even though each flower on the plant only makes 4 seeds, there are enough of them over the course of the season to produce up to 200 seeds per plant! Furthermore, it can spread by rooting out from the bottom nodes of stems that touch the ground.

Purple Dead Nettle (Lamium purpureum)

Purple dead nettle in its natural habitat (Original Image)

Like henbit, purple dead nettle is in the mint family, so they share many morphological similarities. Like henbit, purple dead nettle is a winter annual, so it also germinates in fall, overwinters, and hits its prime in early spring. For these reasons, it is easy to see why an inexperienced forager would mistake one plant for the other. However, for the astute observer, there are some surefire ways to distinguish these to wild edibles. Let’s examine further.