Digitalis purpurea VIRTUOSO™ F1 'RED' common foxglove

Common foxglove is a European native and is found marginally in our country, too. Its flowers are so attractive that breeders keep hybridizing them and every now and then they introduce a new, improved variety. VIRTUOSO™ F1 is a recently introduced series (around 2010) comprising of strong plants with large flowers of striking colours. VIRTUOSO™ F1 Red is a lovely foxglove variety with large, bright pink-purple flowers that are decorated with conspicuous deep red blotches margined with white lines. Its stems are strong, more than one meter tall and hold plentiful of flowers from June until late July. If you cut off the main stem after flowering a few shorter ones will push up to continue flowering until late summer or early autumn.

Leaves are broadly lance-shaped, mid green, toothed at margins, and hairy. Foxglove is a medical plant but also quite toxic. Despite the fact that it doesn’t make any fruit-like looking berries that would attract children it is not recommended for mass plantings near playgrounds, school yards, or kindergartens.

Foxglove will grow in almost any soil apart from too wet or too dry. In the wild it is found in humus-rich soils in light woods and its margins, which means that it will love partial shade in your garden, or full sun if kept moist. Excess fertilizing may cause profusion of leaves but no flowers. Hardy to about -34°C (USDA zone 4).

Last update 07-01-2014.