Fields of Purple

 

There are a few types of purple flowers that show up in early spring and cover the fields with their vivid hue. I can sometimes confuse two of these ground covers: Henbit and Purple Dead Nettle.

  The flowers in the pictures here are Henbit.

Purple Dead Nettle is another purple plant that will cover fields at this time of year. The top foliage is actually where a majority of the purple display comes from. The flowers are also purple but they don't stand out quite as much. 

I don't have any pictures of Purple Dead Nettle that I personally took. I found the picture below on Pixabay.

I found a very helpful web page on Identify that Plant .com that has good pictures and explanations on how to identify these purple plants. Please check it out if these topics interest you! They have a lot of good pictures and even talk about a third plant that can be mistaken for these two: Creeping Charlie.