Day 33 - Foxglove Folklore

Not so long ago, I went on a morning event run by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust - a talk by Debbie Alston about wildflower folklore and uses. It was fascinating!  The morning was not about identifying plants (I'm not too bad at that myself) but was about looking a bit beyond a basic ID and learning more about the flower itself, any folklore attached and what it was used for in years gone by.

It was so interesting and has really inspired me to keep doing that. Throughout 30 Days Wild, I've not really had the time to spare for it, but my idea for 365 Days Wild is that when I have a busy day, a day when I have little time and energy to go on a little outdoor adventure, I will seek out a flower or plant, take a photo and then investigate it a little to learn more about it, just like I did on the morning with Debbie Alston.

The rough plan is a photo with a sort of fact file, which might include basic information such as habitat, alternative or regional names, quotations or poems about the plant, what it can be - or was once - used for and any folklore or interesting stories attached. This will probably vary a bit with each flower, but that's the general idea!

So today, Day 33 of my year of wild; another hot day and a long, busy day at school, plus I had to meet my sister and then visit my Grandmother this evening - all with a banging headache...The perfect day to begin the wildflower folklore postings as it required little more effort than stopping for a photo on my way home and then a bit of research (both books and the internet used) which I have done this morning due to the headache last night. 

Since they are currently lining all the country lanes, my first flower is...

Common Foxglove - Digitalis purpurea

Other names used for the Common Foxglove include: Lady's fingers, dead men's bells, finger flower, purple foxglove, fairy fingers, fairy gloves, fairy bells, floppy dock, tod-tails, fairy thimbles, fairyweed, goblin gloves... and probably many more!

"The foxglove bells, with lolling tongue,

Will not reveal what peals were rung

In Faery, in Faery,

A thousand ages gone. "

(From Foxgloves by Mary Webb)

A common, native plant, found throughout Europe which can grow up to 2 metres tall.  The foxglove signifies the end of spring and the beginning of summer and likes acidic soils, growing in a wide range of habitats.  One plant will produce thousands of seeds and each spring there will be dozens of seedlings emerging around the old plant. Plantlife says that a single foxglove can produce over a million seeds! The common foxglove can be seen between June and September and is the county flower of Argyll, Leicestershire and Monmouthshire.

According to Niall Edworthy, the foxglove flower has arranged itself to suit the demands of bees.
The female flowers at the bottom of the stem contain the most nectar, which decreases in concentration the higher up the plant. By the time the bee has reached the male flowers at the top, the nectar has all but gone, thus persuading the bee to go to the bottom of another column of flowers. In doing so it brings the male pollen to the female flowers.

The name Digitalis comes from the Latin 'Digitus', meaning finger, and it is quite easy to see how it might have been thought that the flowers were 'gloves' for something, with some people believing the name come from 'folks gloves' (meaning fairies gloves) and others believing that the bells were used by foxes. The idea of folks gloves is fairly recent, thought to have gained popularity from the publication of the book English Etymologies, in 1847, by William Henry Fox Talbot - the Victorians were mildly obsessed with the concept of the Celtic "fair folk", though In Gaelic a foxglove was called 'lus nam ban-sith' meaning 'the fairy woman's plant' - so some connection to fairies is evident. In parts of Scotland, foxgloves are called tod-tails - and tod means fox - though what foxes have to do with it remains a mystery.

We all know that foxgloves are highly toxic, but there is minimal risk of death from them as they apparently taste so bad that there is little temptation for animals or humans to carry on chewing! Despite being so poisonous, plants from the Digitalis genus have also saved many, many lives following William Withering's discovery that a traditional herbal remedy taken by someone suffering dropsy caused significant improvements in their condition.  Withering recognised that the active ingredient in the remedy was from the foxglove and published an account of the medicinal uses, with clinical trials, in 1785.  Today, the group of cardiac medicines extracted from the leaves and seeds of Foxgloves are known as Digoxins, though this type of treatment is not as universally accepted nowadays as it was once.

Folk remedies using foxgloves included an infusion to treat sore throats, compresses for sprains and as a diuretic to treat dropsy.

In the Victorian 'Language of Flowers' the foxglove stands for insincerity, possibly due to the connection to fairies and their enormous capacity to make mischief. The mottled markings on foxgloves were once thought to be the hand prints of fairies.

gained popularity after the publication of the book English Etymologies by William Henry Fox (!) Talbot (1847) - See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2010/11/foxglove/#sthash.MVWQ7EJF.dpuf

gained popularity after the publication of the book English Etymologies by William Henry Fox (!) Talbot (1847) - See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2010/11/foxglove/#sthash.MVWQ7EJF.dpuf

EDIT 05/07/15 - Someone from my 365 project sight commented on my photo there to tell me that in Dutch this flower is called 'vingerhoedskruid' which literally translates as a hat for the finger. 


(Just a note... I don't present all of this information as fact - the folklore type bits are just what I've found on the net mainly so there could be inaccuracies! It's meant just to add a bit more to the flower and to show that there's so much more to discover when we look!)