Balm-leaved Archangel, Lamium orvala, in close up.

The garden is full of beauty at the moment, as spring reaches its peak. Today it is raining, and this rare event should refresh and rejuvenate after weeks of warmth and sunshine.

One of the many plants in flower at the moment is Balm-leaved Archangel, Lamium orvala, also known as Balm-leaved Red Deadnettle. It is by no means the showiest plant in the garden, compared with the ‘Canary Bird’ rose, the huge Marsh Marigolds (Caltha palustris) in both ponds, or the tumbling masses of our Clematis alpina ‘Helsingborg’ and Clematis motana ‘Mayleen’. I only have the one plant and it almost hides in the border. But close up, the flowers have a rich beauty all of their own.

Lamium orvala is a member of the family Lamiaceae, a relative of the lovely White Deadnettle (Lamium album), and the Red Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum), one of my favourite flowers, which I wrote about in April 2012.

I first saw Lamium orvala at Chestnut Farm, West Beckham, a lovely North Norfolk garden that is sometimes open for the National Gardens Scheme, where it was providing ground cover beneath a tree. Later, when I had a chance to buy a plant, I did.

Lamium orvala is a herbaceous perennial which flowers in spring (April and May, even in June in some places). Its leaves are larger and lusher than those of White or Red Deadnettles, with prominent veins, giving them an almost quilt-like appearance, and finely toothed leaf margins. The flowers are sumptuous, a deep dusky pink, with an especially lovely flared, spotted lower lip. They have been described as being “almost orchid-like“. They should be attractive to bees, but in our garden bees visit Red and White Deadnettles instead, probably because we grow more of them, in sunnier parts of the garden.

The plant likes damp shade or semi-shade. I grow it in semi-shade and my soil is a bit too well drained to be ideal but nonetheless my plant keeps going year after year. It is in the middle of the border, where it is hidden by other plant growth once the flowers are finished, and this also protects it to some extent from summer’s heat and drought. It is very hardy, with a UK hardiness rating of H7, tolerating temperatures of -20 Celsius or lower.

Lamium orvala is a native of central eastern Europe: parts of Austria, Italy, Hungary, the former Yugoslavia, Ukraine and Moldova. The NBN Atlas has a couple of distribution spots for the plant growing wild in Britain, but you are really only likely to find it in gardens in the UK. It has a neat clump-forming growth habit and therefore is unlikely to outstay its welcome and become a garden throw-out.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Master Gardener Program website has some more useful information, including propagation tips. It also mentions a white-flowered form, ‘Alba’. Both this and the Gardeners’ World website have suggestions for plants that Lamium orvala can be combined with in the garden.

The BBC Gardeners’ World website says that Lamium orvala can be toxic to livestock and horses, but gives no further details. I can’t find any information on the Plants For A Future website, either.

There are some good photographs of the plant on the Royal College of Physicians’ Garden of Medicinal Plants website. Medicinal information is scarce, however, and the site references Dr. Henry F. Oakley’s Wellcome Library notes, in which he says “I can find no information about it.”

Best to treat it as ornamental only, which is fine by me.