The
sight of a traditional cottage garden, with flowering
plants growing next to the vegetables growing
next to the medicinal herbs growing next to the
flowers, seems like an exercise in chaos to many,
more formal, gardeners. For others, the cottage
garden conjures up visions of castles and queens,
dragons and faeries, and safe, sheltered hideaways
hidden deep in the forest.
No cottage garden is complete without
a profusion of foxglove flowers standing tall,
as if keeping watch for any evil spirits that
might dare enter. Officially called Digitalis
purpurea, the foxglove name tells a magical story.
Digitalis means finger, as reflected in
the shape of the plant’s long, slender flowers
said to resemble the fingers of a glove. The plant
was once thought to belong to the forest faeries,
or good folks, and the name might be a corruption
of the term “folk’s glove.”
The white markings on the insides of the flowers
are said to be elve’s fingerprints.
Foxes do play a role in the plant’s
name, too. It is said that the forest faeries
taught the fox how to use the foxglove flowers
to muffle the sound of his footsteps, the better
to sneak up to the henhouse for dinner each evening.
No matter how beautiful the flowers or
magical the lore, every single part of a foxglove
plant is very poisonous to man. This characteristic
of the plant is probably why the plant is also
known in folksy circles as dead man’s bells.
In 1785, an Englishman named William Withering
discovered a substance in the plant’s leaves
that strengthened the heartbeat and eased the
symptoms of dropsy (today called edema). The magic
ingredient was named digitoxin and today it is
extracted for widespread use in traditional medicine
has a heart stimulant.
Most herbal remedies are mild and merely
“tweak” the body back into healthy
balance. Some of them, however, can be very potent
and should never be used by a novice herbalist.
When it comes to foxglove in the garden, it is
one plant that should be looked at but never consumed.
Reference
Kruger, Anna; An Illustrated Guide to Herbs: Their
Medicine and Magic; A Dragon’s World Book;
Limpsfield and London; 1993
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