We’ve got answers to all those burning questions about these towering blooming beauties
Foxgloves are easy to grow – except when they surprise us. Some flower for a few late spring and early summer weeks and are never seen again. Some attract more bees than you’d ever thought possible for many summer and autumn months, then struggle through to the following spring. Some foxglove seeds will not germinate unless you don’t cover the seed. And why do they pop up in unexpected places? And why are they called foxgloves, anyway? Read on for all the answers…
Why do they have the name foxgloves?
There are a number of possible explanations, none very scientific. The most appealing reason is that friendly fairies helped the fox catch supper by slipping an individual foxglove flower on each paw so it could sneak up on its prey unnoticed, in magical silence. It was also said, in Ireland, that the foxglove was the plant you need when the fairies had made off with a baby.
Why do my foxgloves with small, yellow flowers come up every year while ones with big purple flowers die after one summer?
There are three kinds of foxgloves. Many foxgloves with small, yellow flowers (D. grandiflora, D. lutea) are clump-forming hardy perennials that come up year after year. The most familiar is the native foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) with towers of purple flowers. This is a biennial plant that grows one year, flowers the following summer, then dies and sheds seed that pops up to flower the following year. There’s also a newer, more exotic-looking group of halfhardy perennial foxgloves (D. valinii) that behave as short-lived perennials and which thrive in well-drained containers.
My foxgloves keep dying, then young plants pop up somewhere else. What’s going on?
It’s natural for our native wild biennial foxglove and its varieties. It flowers in early summer; the seed ripens and drops later in summer. Some seeds sprout quite quickly but some may wait as long as a few years.
After germinating, the seedlings soon make rosettes of foliage. Then the plants pause for the winter before growing strongly in spring, sending up a flower spike and beginning the cycle all over again. Cutting off the flower spikes at the base, as its final flowers fade, may encourage a second year of bloom but not always.
I sowed some foxglove seeds in a pot this time last year, but only one came up. What happened?
Summer is the best time to sow foxglove seeds, as this allows the young plants many more summer weeks in which to grow and develop into plants that will flower prolifically the following year.
But unlike most seeds, t
