Digitalis, Foxglove

Throughout both the countryside and garden, foxgloves bring grace and architecture to the early summer landscape.

One of their great beauties in the garden is that they are equally at home growing between shrubs, among pale old roses at the back of a border or bedded in a more artificial scheme.

There are around 20 interesting foxglove species inhabiting Mediterranean countries and running as far east as Central Asia. All have tube-shaped flowers and many show distinctive colours, particularly in rusty, ochreous or peachy hues, often with hairy or lipped petals.

Fairy-tale flower

The English name has nothing to do with foxes, but is a corruption of folks' gloves, since it was thought that fairy folk used the flowers as gloves. The Latin, digitalis, refers to the flowers' shape, looking like fingers or digits