Wild Flowers Of Strathclyde Park
  
 

Foxglove
Digitalis purpurea
of the Figwort family
Biennial or perennial
60-150 cm high
blooms June-August
likes woods and grassy places
can be seen in the Visitor Centre wild garden.

    
The name of the plant is a corruption of its Anglo-Saxon name "folk's bell" (a gliew being a type of bell). Indeed even today the flowers are called "Fairy Bells" in certain parts of the British Isles. Although the plant is poisonous is can be used to produce digitalis, a heart drug
.