Foxglove: Beautiful biennial held secret to ancient treatment for deadly disease
In the 18th century they called it “dropsy.” An old medical text explains the symptoms of this cardiac malady that caused such irregular or weak heartbeats that patients literally drowned in their own fluids.
The disease known as dropsy “puffed their bodies into grotesque shapes, squeezed their lungs, and finally brought slow but inexorable death. As the disease progressed, a water liquid filtered into every available space and expanded it like a balloon. Sometimes the liquid—quarts and gallons of it—made arms and legs swell so that they were immovable. Sometimes it waterlogged the lung cavity and thereby made it impossible for the victim to breathe unless he sat bolt upright all day and all night.”
There was only one known treatment for dropsy that seemed to work on those afflicted. It was a potion brewed around the rural parts of England by folk healers, usually women who treated those that could not afford a physician. After seeing the effects of such a potion on his patients, a young English physician, William Withering, sought to find the efficacious ingredients of the folk potions. While each recipe differed, the single common component was a plant called foxglove, botanically known as Digitalis purpurea. It grew in field and fen and gardens of England where it’s easily recognized by the tall flower stalks.
Withering’s effort transformed the medical arts by testing the plant and soon the active chemical was isolated and dubbed “digoxin.” It has been used in medicine ever since to regulate heartbeat of man and animal. It may be the most efficacious of all the herbal materia medica due to cardiac glycosides and digoxin, the heart regulating component.
This is the amazing history of a beautiful garden flower that’s found in both cottage yards and highbrow manor houses. As a bedding plant it’s been bred to be larger and offer more colors than the wildflowers of Withering’s day. Breeding of various species of Digitalis has resulted in striking hybrids.
But now that you know the history of its use for dropsy, it becomes clear this is no plant to play with. In fact, one of its old common names is “dead man’s bells” due to the potential of fatal overdose. Beware of growing in yards with kids and pets that may find its velvety flowers appetizing. The leaves can be easily mistaken for the benign herb, comfrey. The curious common name, foxglove, was derived from the tubular finger sized flowers. Foxes were thought to place the flowers on their feet to silence their steps when raiding the henhouse.
Foxglove is among the most beautiful bedding flowers you can buy either as a youngster or in full second year bloom. As a biennial, foxglove has a two-year life cycle. If you buy young first-year seedlings which are the most affordable, they might bloom modestly or not at all so the roots can become established the first summer. Then the foliage dies back to winter over. The second year it will literally explode into bloom with massive full sized stalks supported by mature roots.
The key to success with any biennial is to plant a few first-year plants every spring.
These are your investment in next year’s garden. Meanwhile last year’s plants are busting out all over for a great spring and summer show.
In mild foggy climates foxglove can grow in full sun.
They have naturalized to become invasive wildflowers of New England coast amidst grasslands and scrub. In warmer climates foxgloves are best grown in shade, or where protected from afternoon sun.
This may be one of the best perennials for acidic soils of woodland home sites and as seasonal color in old neighborhoods shrouded by massive old shade trees.
Though William Withering was the first to discover digitalis as a medicinal plant, the real credit for discovery belongs to the folk healers.
It was they who first used it in their dropsy potions that actually provided relief at a time when the medical establishment was busy purging and bleeding its patients to death.