Foxes and Faries!

This year, I decided that I wanted all white flowers in my front planter.  Our house and the planter is darker gray, so I thought they would really stand out and I have always loved white flowers!

I think it is fairly obvious that I like white flowers.  Look at the inside of my house right now!

And last spring

Two years ago at Christmas in Minneapolis

This year's front planter:

My plan was to buy a mass of white snapdragons.  When I went to the big box store, the snapdragons looked awful.  Then I went to the huge Minneapolis corporate nursery with locations all over the cities.

They only sold mixed colors to a pot.

Finally, I was referred to a fantastic nursery not far from my home, Tonkadale.  It was a plant lovers paradise.  Not only did they have flats of all white and they had my other favorites in white, too.

Unfortunately, my plans for white Snapdragons and white Bleeding Hearts (which I have had some success with) didn’t materialize. 

One trip to Costco with my husband, mister green thumb, and I came home with six pink Foxglove plants.  I have planted Foxglove every year and I love it, but I had decided to have something else this year.  Well, the Foxglove plants were fabulous and very reasonably priced.  The only drawback was that they were pink! 

I not only came home with six pink Foxglove plants, but two small topiaries of Lavender.

The Snapdragons

Why is it called 'Snapdragon'?

Quite a peculiar name, isn't it, especially for a flower? The name comes from the look of this flower when it is squeezed from the sides. It looks pretty much like a dragon opening and closing its mouth. Hence, it is so named

The origin unknown, but it  is widely presumed that it grew in the wild, in the regions of Spain and Italy.

The flower symbolism associated with snapdragons is graciousness and strength.

Foxglove – (youth – stateliness)

Foxglove is symbolic of both healing and harm, foxglove flowers have both positive and negative symbolic meanings. The scientific name is digitalis, a reference to the presence of extremely powerful chemicals used to treat heart conditions when correctly administered. However if taken in large amounts it is deadly.

The Faery Lore of Foxgloves BY MARA FREEMAN

Faery gloves

Faery caps and bells –

Foxgloves are the Folks’ Gloves,

the Good Folk, that is,

and you’d better not forget it if you think to cut them down.

In the Faery Glen

on the Isle of Skye,

foxgloves stand like watchful sentinels of the Hidden People.

On Highland hillsides they march in crimson,

like the hosts of trooping faeries.

In Ireland’s wooded hollows,

glowing purple in the dusk,

foxglove is the lus na mban sidhe,

the Plant of the Faery Woman.

In Donegal, the blossoms are meíríní púca, Puck’s fingers,

or méaracan sídhe, Shilly Thimbles, Thimbles of the Sídhe.

When a foxglove bows its head, a faery is passing by.

Faeries have been seen dancing beneath them in the Welsh Marches, not so long ago.

And in Ireland, according to a story told to Yeats, they often hide under the leaves where the casual observer mistakes their red caps for the crimson bells.

Foxgloves are also called bee-catchers and beehives in the West Country.

It is said that the path of brown and white spots on the floor of each bell are

the marks of elven fingers, designed to lead the bee towards the nectar.

Little girls especially like to pull the flowers from foxgloves and put them on their fingers, pretending they had long pretty fingernails [Tregaer, Monmouthshire, October 2013].

 If white flowers occur in garden foxgloves there will be a death in the family [Holbeach, Lincolnshire, January 2004].

From my paternal grandparents, Joseph Beach (b. 1856), m. Jane (b. 1860)

Snomper – or snowper (rhymes with cow) – foxglove. A favourite admonition to a noisy child: ‘Shut thee chops; thee bist like a bumble bee in a snowper.’ A favourite occupation in summer was to trap a bee in in a foxglove flower to hear it buzz angrily!

 Foxglove leaves were placed in children’s shoes and worn thus for a year, as a cure for scarlet fever – in Shropshire [Haynes, Bedfordshire, August 1984].

Picking foxgloves was unlucky and they were absolutely forbidden inside the house as this gave witches/the devil access to the house. Staffordshire (Tutbury), 1950s [Natural History Museum, London, May 1982].

It was the original source of the drug called digitalis. Foxglove is a native of Europe. It was first known by the Anglo-Saxon name foxes glofa (the glove of the fox), because its flowers look like the fingers of a glove.

Foxglove Meaning - Foxglove flowers have both positive and negative symbolic meanings. They are said to sometimes hurt and sometimes heal. In the language of flowers, foxglove is associated with insincerity. ... Rumor also has it that picking foxglove offends the fairy folk.

Most people know that foxglove is used in medicine. But here’s something less well known: foxglove heals plants as well as people. An old name for digitalis is “Doctor Foxglove”, because garden plants near it grow stronger and resist disease. “Apart from keeping plants healthier, they will improve the storage qualities of such things as potatoes, tomatoes, and apples grown near them,” report Maureen and Bridget Boland in Old Wives Lore for Gardeners.

Old names for plants often point to valuable clues about their uses, personalities, and associations.  A plant with a lot of names is a plant with a lot of clout.

Here are some of the older names for foxglove:

Witch’s Glove, Dead Men’s Bells, Fairy’s Glove, Gloves of Our Lady, Bloody Fingers,  Virgin’s Glove, Fairy Caps, Folk’s Glove, Fairy Thimbles, Lion’s Mouth, Fairy Fingers, King Elwand, Foxbell, Floppy dock, Flowster-Docker,  Fingerhut (German: means “thimble”), Revbielde (Norwegian).

Some of these names are a warning that foxglove can kill you, and others refer to the way the plant looks. The “glove” aspect of many of the common names (including “foxglove”) is easy enough to see: can there be anybody who hasn’t surreptitiously slipped a finger into the hairy finger-shaped mouths of these flowers? “Digitalis”, the Latin name, makes the same connection: digitalis means “finger”.

But other names have even more evocative connections.

I’ve already mentioned the “glove” aspect of the name foxglove. The “fox” part is said to be derived from “Folk’s”, referring to the fairy folk, who may have been plant spirits or the small dark Picts that the Celts and Anglo-Saxons overcame. The Picts were thought to have supernatural healing and magical powers, and they were pagans through and through, which accorded ill with the Romans and Christian regimes. The Picts may have been some of the original carriers of the knowledge of foxglove’s healing powers, or that knowledge may go even further back.

Some of foxglove’s other names hint of ancient powers. Foxglove is associated with the planet Venus; the names for foxglove that refer to the Virgin Mary are also likely a whitewashed or  in-code version of the older connections of foxglove with Venus.  Mary often did service in place of older, earlier goddesses, with more pagan fertility leanings. In some forms of Italian magic, foxglove opens the user to strong sexual love, appropriate for a plant of Venus. But while romantic love is probably the best-known association with Venus, she also rules arts, beauty, and fairies, who live in earthly realms of enchantment.

One version of Venus is the Tarot card “The Empress”, who sits enthroned (and often pregnant) in a garden of fruits and flowers, the ruler of earthly delights. That seems particularly appropriate for a plant that can improve the fertility of plants next to it, and even prolong the life of cut flowers.  If foxgloves are in an arrangement, all of the flowers in the bouquet will last longer. (As a cut flower, the best way to preserve foxglove is to cut the stem when only half the blossoms are open. Fill the hollow stem with water, then plug it and set in warm water. Although to be honest, I usually just whack off the stem and put into water in the same second; they still last for weeks if you keep them in a cool spot.) If you don’t have any foxgloves flowering, you can still take advantage of their life-enhancing properties: add foxglove tea to the water of other bouquets. You can make the tea by pouring boiling water on a handful of leaves and allowing them to steep overnight.

Postscript:  I found one white Foxglove plant at our local Menards for only $2.00 per plant more than Costco, so the garden will have one white Foxglove after all!