Foxgloves have nothing to do with foxes' paws, whatever folklore says
A popular tale claims foxes slipped foxglove flowers onto their feet to creep up on prey. The truth is plainer: the Old English name was simply fox's glove, and the botanical name Digitalis comes from the Latin for finger. The same showy plant yields a heart drug and is dangerously poisonous.
Digitalis is a genus of about 20 species of perennials, shrubs and biennials native to Europe, Western Asia and northwestern Africa. Tall spikes carry tubular flowers in purple, pink, white or yellow depending on species. The best known is the common foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, a biennial grown in gardens for its vivid, often spotted blooms; gardeners also plant species such as D. grandiflora and D. lutea. In its first year the plant forms a low rosette of woolly, hairy leaves, then in its second sends up an upright flowering stem ending in drooping bells, followed by capsules packed with tiny seeds.
The German botanist Leonhart Fuchs coined the name in 1542, in a book on the history of plants, working from the German Fingerhut. Literally finger hat, that word actually means thimble. English speakers were already calling the plant foxes glofa in Old English. Folk stories later wrapped the name in myths about stealthy foxes, helped by the flowers carpeting the wooded slopes where foxes dug their dens, and darker nicknames such as witch's glove hint at its toxicity. Victorian writers floated alternatives: Henry Fox Talbot suggested folks' glove, meaning fairy, in 1847, and R. C. A. Prior proposed a phrase meaning fairy music in 1863, but neither fits the Old English form.
Classification has shifted repeatedly. Carl Linnaeus published the genus in 1753. Long placed in the figwort family, it was moved in 2001 after genetic studies and now sits in the greatly enlarged plantain family, Plantaginaceae. John Lindley wrote the first full monograph in 1821, and Klaus Werner the last in 1965, recognising 19 species, while Plants of the World Online listed 27 in 2017.
The word digitalis also names medicines containing cardiac glycosides, notably digoxin, extracted from these plants. Yet foxglove is highly poisonous to people and other mammals, and eating it can cause serious illness or death.
Source: Digitalis
