Everything you never thought you'd know about foxgloves

18th July 2023

Our native Foxglove, or to give it is proper name digitalis purpurea, is a biennial plant native to Europe, North Africa and Central Asia. In 1753, Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms, and known as the 'father of modern taxonomy', gave foxglove its Latin name simply because he thought the flowers looked like the fingertips of gloves.

The name foxglove exists in a list of plants as far back as the 14th century. The prefix fox has most likely been derived from folks, who to our ancestors of that time were the fairies, but to speak of them explicitly was believed to get their attention & cause them to do mischief. Glove may have come from the Anglo-Saxon gliew, which was the name for a musical instrument consisting of many small bells, put the two together to make Fairy Bells.

Some stories have told that the word foxglove is merely a misrepresentation of "folk's glove", gloves little people might wear. Others say fairies gave the flowers to the foxes to put on their paws to enable them to sneak silently into the hen house without being heard. This story is echoed in the belief that the mottled spots inside the flowers are actually fairy handprints.