Early in the 1990s P-LA received a note about boys in south Cambridgeshire making whistles from the stems of white deadnettle (Lamium album) 40 or more years earlier.  Since then whenever it’s been possible to do so this was mentioned in the course of talks on plant-lore, in the hope that someone might be able to provide further information.

No one was able to do so until six days ago when a man attending a walk in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, London, recalled that as a boy in Kent, from 1947 to the 1950s he made whistles from the dried stems:

‘Cut to a suitable length with razor/sharp knife [make a] slot near end [to make] whistle.’

Other people on the walk recalled the much more widespread practice of sucking the base of deadnettle flowers to extract the nectar.

Image:  Arundel, West Sussex; May 2016.