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Digitalis
Also called Foxglove
Digitalis is a genus of about 20 species of perennials, biennials and shrubs, best known as the common foxglove (D. purpurea), a biennial grown for its tall spikes of tubular, often purple, flowers. Grow it in partial shade with moist, well-drained soil, and treat every part of it as poisonous.
Digitalis ( or ) is a genus of about 20 species of herbaceous perennial plants, shrubs, and biennials, commonly called foxgloves.
Digitalis is native to Europe, Western Asia, and northwestern Africa. The flowers are tubular in shape, produced on a tall spike, and vary in colour with species, from purple to pink, white, and yellow. The name derives from the Latin word for "finger". The genus was traditionally placed in the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae, but phylogenetic research led taxonomists to move it to the Veronicaceae in 2001. More recent phylogenetic work has placed it in the much enlarged family Plantaginaceae.
Depending on the species, the digitalis plant may contain several deadly physiological and chemically related cardiac and steroidal glycosides. Thus, the digitalis plants have earned several, more sinister, names: dead man's bells and witch's gloves. The toxins can be absorbed via the skin or ingestion.
Digitalis intoxication, known as digitalism, results from an overdose of digitalis and can cause gastrointestinal, cardiac and neurological effects. The former include appetite loss, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea; the cardiac symptoms include both tachycardia, and bradycardia (either of which, if severe enough, can result in syncope—see below); and the neurological effects include fatigue, delirium, and rarely xanthopsia (jaundiced or yellow vision). Other oculotoxic effects of digitalis include generalized blurry vision, as well as the appearance of blurred outlines ('halos'). Other things mentioned are dilated pupils, drooling, weakness, collapse, seizures, and even death.
Larvae of the foxglove pug, a moth, consume the flowers of the common foxglove for food. Other species of Lepidoptera eat the leaves, including the lesser yellow underwing. The shape of the foxglove's flowers makes it especially attractive to long-tongued bees, such as the common carder bee. The bright flowers attract the bee, which lands on the lower lip of the bloom before climbing up the tube. This means that the bee is likely to drop any pollen it may have collected from other foxgloves, thereby facilitating propagation.
Rusty foxglove · Digitalis ×fulva · Yellow Foxglove · Straw Foxglove · Digitalis parviflora · Foxglove
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Digitalis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
