Spotted Henbit (*Lamium maculatum*)
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##### [](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Lamium_maculatum%2C_Robin_Hill_Park%2C_2024-07-18.jpg) Photographed July 18.
A popular garden groundcover frequently found in the wild around Pittsburgh. The forms around here usually have a white blotch in the middle of each leaf, which makes identification easy.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Lamium_maculatum%2C_Robin_Hill_Park%2C_2024-07-18-2.jpg)
There are many common names for this plant; Purple Dragon is another, and the flowers do look like little dragon heads if you have the kind of imagination that sees dragon heads in little purple flowers.
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Lamium_maculatum%2C_Robin_Hill_Park%2C_2024-07-18-1.jpg)
Gray describes the genus and the species:
LAMIUM L. Dead-Nettle. Calyx tubular-campanulate, about 5-nerved, with 5 nearly equal awl-pointed teeth. Corolla dilated at the throat; upper lip ovate or oblong, arched, narrowed at the base; the middle lobe of the spreading lower lip broad, notched at the apex, contracted as if stalked at the base; the lateral ones small, at the margin of the throat. — Decumbent herbs, nat. of Eurasia and n. Air., the lowest leaves small and long-petioled, the middle cordate and doubly toothed, the upper bracteal ones subtending the whorled flower-clusters. (Old Latin name of a nettle-like plant mentioned by Pliny.)
L. MACULATUM L. (spotted). — *Perennial* with creeping stems and basal offshoots;
flowering stems often forking, 1.5-5 dm. high; leaves all petioled, ovate, crenate-dentate, often doubly so, *frequently with a whitish blotch bordering the midrib*, the lower ones cordate or cordate-ovate, *the upper triangular ones 2-6 cm. long* and becoming remote; flowers 6-15 in a whorl, naked or each subtended by a small bractlet; calyx 7-8, becoming 13-15 mm. long, the unequal lobes finally divergent; *corolla rose-purple*, or white in forma LACTEUM (Wallr.) G. Beck (milky), 1.8-2.5 cm. long, the cylindric *tube exceeding the calyx and with an
internal transverse ring of hairs*, the upper lip strongly arched and with 2 dorsal ridges. — Roadsides, waste ground, etc., esc. from cult., N.E. to s. Ont., s. to N.C. and Tenn. April-Oct. (Introd. from Eu.)
[](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Lamium_maculatum%2C_Robin_Hill_Park%2C_2024-07-18-3.jpg)