Fantastical Foxgloves
Beautiful yet deadly, ornamental but useful. The Foxglove has certainly got a lot going for it. It has a mysterious and enigmatic aura – perhaps this is because of the associations with witchcraft and fairies, or perhaps it is because it is commonly known to be deadly. All parts of the plant are poisonous and can kill if ingested. The Latin name for the plant is Digitalis Purpurea – which literally translated means purple fingers. In folklore, it has many other names including Fairy Fingers, Ladies Thimbles, Rabbit Flowers, Throatwort , Dead Mans Bells, Witches Gloves and Goblin Gloves. There are several stories behind the most common name of Foxglove. The most plausible explanation is that it derives from the old name Folks Glove (the folk part being a way of alluding to fairies) while other stories attribute it to the legend that the fairies gave the flowers to foxes to use as gloves to muffle the tracking of their prey. The association with witches stems from the fact that