Foxglove
Foxglove: Sowing, planting and harvest calendar
Common foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, is the foxglove described in this portrait. This herbaceous plant belongs to the plantain family and occurs naturally in western Europe. It brings to mind woodland clearings, edges and cottage gardens, where long flower spikes add height to planting. The genus Digitalis also includes perennial species and hybrids with different colours and life cycles. Their behaviour should not automatically be attributed to common foxglove.This species is usually biennial, sometimes a short lived perennial. It first produces a leaf rosette, then normally flowers in the following season before completing its life cycle. Self sown seedlings can maintain its presence in a garden, but those young rosettes are new plants. Some garden selections can flower in their first year. That difference helps explain why the disappearance of a flowering stem does not always mean that the same plant will return.The rosette leaves are elongated to oval, often wrinkled…
