Digitalis purpurea Foxglove

A very familiar biennial or short-lived perennial herb which is common throughout Britain. After germination, seedlings give rise to a large rosette of oval-lanceolate leaves that have a rough, wrinkled surface and which overwinter. The following summer, each rosette gives rise to a tall stem which produces spires of large, tubular pink-purple (occsionally white) flowers decorated on the inside with elegant circular or oval markings that often have white haloes. The flowers are protandrous; i.e. the male parts (the stamens) develop before the female parts (carpels), so the oldest flowers at the botton are effectively female and the youngest at the top are effectively male. This clever arrangemnet assures cross pollination by bumble bees that commonly visit the flowers. Bees sytematically work through the flowers almost always from bottom to top, i.e. old to young, ensuring that when they leave one plant they are carrying pollen to the carplels on the older flowers of the next one. It is a species of open or lightly shaded habitats such as hedgebanks and will often occur in large numbers in recently cleared areas of woodland such as after coppicing or in clear felled coupes in conifer plantations. It is a very common, widespread and almost ubiquitous plant in West Glamorgan. Most parts of the plant contain toxic cardiac glycosides (cardenolides) of several types, notably digoxin and the very similar digitoxin, which are the most widely used cardiac glycoside in the treatment of congenital heart failure and atrial fibrillation. Its medicinal properties were described in ancient materia medica and well known to apothecaries and physicians in medieval times, such as the physicians of Myddfai.

Native