A tall biennial spike of speckled tubular flowers that lines hedgerows and gives medicine its most important heart drug, digitalis.
Where it grows
The common foxglove is native to western Europe, on acid soils in woodland clearings, hedge banks, and recently disturbed ground. It has naturalised in temperate North and South America, and is invasive on Hawaii and in New Zealand pasture, where it has poisoned livestock.
How to recognise it
A first-year rosette of large soft, downy oval leaves builds up reserves before sending up a single tall flower stem in the second year. The spike can reach two metres, with twenty to eighty bell-shaped flowers ranged along one side, each five centimetres long, in pink with deeper red spots inside the throat to guide bumblebees in.
Garden & cultural uses
William Withering’s 1785 An Account of the Foxglove documented the leaf’s effect on dropsy (heart failure) and laid the foundation of modern pharmacology. The cardiac glycosides isolated from foxglove leaves remain in the pharmacopoeia today. Eating any part of the plant is dangerous.
In symbolism
The common name may come from “folks’ glove,” with “folks” referring to fairies; alternative folk etymology links it to foxes wearing the flowers as gloves to silence their paws on chicken coops.
Find more flowers by letter
Foxglove starts with F and ends with E. Browse other flowers along the same letter.
Flowers that contain a letter from "Foxglove":