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Updated: June 24, 2025
Tell me, has not the Salvia, while remaining so much the same shape as the dead-nettle, devised a wonderful contrivance to make use of the visits of the bee? Everyone has noticed what an irregular shape this flower has, and that one of its purple petals has a curious spur sticking out behind.
Passing up the Lauterbrünnen valley, I came upon some wild raspberries and quantities of the fine, large-flowered sage, Salvia glutinosa, with its yellow flowers, in shape like those of the dead-nettle, but much bigger. They were being visited by humble-bees, and I was able to see the effective mechanism at work by which the bee's body is dusted with the pollen of the flower.
Another instance may be quoted; it has been pointed out by Grant Allen, and refers to the dead-nettle or Lamium album. Systematically placed in a genus with red-flowering species, we may regard its white color as due to the latency of the general red pigment.
With Tormentil, Archangel, and various forms of Dead-nettle, we find only Badman's Posies and Rabbits'-meat. The worst perplexity is that well-known names, which one would think were securely appropriated, are often common property.
There is another flower, called the Salvia, which belongs to the same family as our dead-nettle, and I think you will agree with me that its way of dusting the bee's back is most clever.
In the stony African Karoo, where every plant is eagerly sought out for food by the scanty local fauna, there are tubers which exactly resemble the pebbles around them; and I have little doubt that our perfectly harmless English dead-nettle secures itself from the attacks of browsing animals by its close likeness to the wholly unrelated, but well-protected, stinging-nettle.
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