Nothing captures the deep, seductive languor of high summer quite like the nodding purple-clustered spires of foxgloves. Whether they’re waving shadily at the back of a cottage garden, enchanting a midsummer woodland glade or spectacularly crowding forestry clearfells, railway embankments or a forgotten patch of rough ground behind the supermarket, foxgloves are as recognisable and loved as they are feared.
Summer walks as a child beside my formidable Northamptonshire Nan were punctuated by floral wisdoms. The roadside racemes of tumbling, tubular bells would always get a nod and “thar’ll raise the dead and fell the living!” Every part of this cardiac curative is also poisonous.
Flowering from June to September, foxgloves are a valuable source of nectar, and the leaves and flowers are eaten by moth caterpillars, such as the foxglove pug and yellow underwing. But foxgloves have a particular relationship with bees, their premier pollinator – especially long-tongued species suchdown-sloping bells acts as a landing pad. Dark spots inside each flower’s pale throat act as guiding landing lights, detected by a bee’s ultraviolet vision.