Foxgloves

Foxglove Love

| Flower Roberts

If you like surprises, you may want to add some foxglove to your gardens.

Foxglove/ Digitalis purpurea

Not only do they self-seed to change location and change color, they also change shape.

If you have added numerous varieties to your garden the surprises will occur every spring.

As the lovely plants bloom and set seed, their DNA mixes to produces new combinations.

Every spring is a color crap shoot. This spring I have some new shapes.

I also have a new white with spots that are almost invisible.

This is one of the many reasons I love foxglove, besides those spots.

FLOWER

In Love with Foxglove

| Flower Roberts

Their rosettes of fuzzy leaves appear first. They show up wherever the seeds are blown.

Some plants stay lovely little green cones while others grow spires toward the sky.

I wonder what color will appear on the blooms, but I am certain there will be spots.

Those spots are what get me. I wonder around peering into the little hats.

Admiring the patterns that guide the bees to the treasure.

They are magic. I imagine fairies and elves wearing them.

I am in love with Foxgloves.

FLOW

Seeing Spots!

| Flower Roberts

This is the most magical plant in my garden.

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Its nickname is Fairy Flower.

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Most call it foxglove. The scientific name is Digitalis purpurea.

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One year I actually hid tiny fairies in the flowers for a post.

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Most of my foxgloves are pink this season.

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But no two are identical.

The tubular flowers have hairs inside along the bottom.

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The stamen with pollen and stigma are under the roof.

Bees go in and get their tummies tickled by the hairs

as pollen is deposited onto or removed from their backs.

It’s the spots that get me.

Flow

 

 

The Most Magical Plant of All

| Flower Roberts

If there were an official plant of the fairies, I bet it would be the foxglove.

They are magical plants.  They sow their own seeds. They change colors.

Even their flower shapes morph from year to year.

They seem to know where they belong and what form is needed.

Or is it the fairies that do it?

Every year I anticipate some surprises from my Digitalis purpurea.

This year there were several.    Some pinks got pinker.

Some whites turned half pink.

Some flower tubes got longer and narrower.

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Some seeds sneaked into the bunny yard to germinate and had to be moved.  They are poisonous.

Foxgloves are so charming, they must be magic.

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Mothers shouldn’t have favorites, but…

| Flower Roberts

Since my flowers can’t read, I can tell you

that I prefer the poisonous Digitalis

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above all my other flowers.

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They make my heart race.

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I have a weakness for their

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spots and spires.

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I try not to stare at them, but they are hypnotic.

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They self- seed and I let them grow where ever they wish.

I can’t get enough of these lovely foxgloves.

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Happy Mother’s Day

Follow the FLOWER!