British Plants and Flowers – Foxglove

Name – The common name has nothing to do with foxes, but is a corruption of the phrase 'folks' gloves' because woodland spirits were said to use flowers as gloves. The Latin, digitalis, refers to the flowers finger-like shape.

Description – Foxglove has tall spires and dangling tube-like flowers large enough for a grown man to slide his finger into. They generally come in white, yellows, mauves, maroons and purples, many with beautiful speckles in the throat of the flower.

Origin - Foxgloves quickly form colourful clumps to liven up areas of light shade – they also attract masses of bees. Most foxgloves are biennials, which means that you sow seed one year; they flower, die and scatter seed the next. Virtually any soil is fine, ideally being quite rich, but avoid wet and dry extremes, and you’ll get the best effect if you let the plant grow in light shade. The optimum time for sowing seed is as it matures on the plant in mid to late summer, before the end of August and the resulting seedlings will produce large, early flowering plants for next summer.. Medicines from foxgloves are called Digitalins and are still in widespread use. The use of Digitalis purpurea extract containing cardiac glycosides for the treatment of heart conditions was first described by William Withering, in 1785, which is considered the beginning of modern therapeutic medicine. Van Gogh took it as a treatment for his epilepsy and it is believed that the yellow haze some patients experience as a result of taking digitalis could have been partly responsible for the glowing yellow, gold and ochre tones of many of his paintings.

British plant foxglove photograph by photogirl17, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

bluebell, comfrey, flax, foxglove, hawthorn, heartsease, heather, herb robert, holly, hollyhock, honeysuckle, hop, hornbeam, jacobs ladder, larkspur, oak, periwinkle, rowan, silver birch, snowdrop, tansy, vipers bugloss, wild strawberry, willow, yarrow

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