Fascinated by foxglove: granny bonnets, witch's thimble, or blood finger? These bell-shaped blossoms look grand no matter what you call them.

The foxglove, under such guises as lady's fingers, dead men's bellows, granny bonnets, witch's thimble, and a host of other fanciful names, has attracted the interest of mankind for centuries. In the United States, the foxglove is cultivated both as a medicinal herb and as an ornamental flowering plant. The foxglove lends its beauty to Mississippi gardens in the summertime.

Herbalists offer two versions of how the plant's name originated. "Foxglove" may be a corruption of "folk glove," the "folk" referring to "little folk" or sprites. Then again, the word may derive from the Anglo-Saxon foxes-glew, or "fox music," which refers to an ancient musical instrument consisting of bells hung on an arched support.

The Latin binomial--digitalis purpurea--is less troublesome. The man who coined the term, a 16th-century Bavarian physician and botanist named Leonard Fuchs, noted that the term "digitalis" is the adjectival form of the Latin word for finger. Fuchs first applied the term digitus to the foxglove in his herbal De Historia Stirpium, published in 1542. Fuchs accompanied his drawing of the foxglove with a comment suggesting its effectiveness as a cure for a medical condition called dropsy. Digitalis is the common wild foxglove of England and Western Europe and is propagated today in many varieties and grown throughout the world.

Common names for the foxglove abound and can be grouped according to origin:

* From the color of the flowers--bloody finger or bloody man's finger;

* From the shape of the flower--dead men's bellows, dog fingers, finger flower, fox-fingers, lady's glove;

* From the height of the flower--fox-tree;

* From the habit of children inflating the flowers like balloons and making them pop--poppy, green pops, pop-glove, poppers.

Digitalis purpurea is a plant whose profusion of spikes and thimble-shaped, multi-colored blossoms delight many a gardener. Indeed, in gardens all over the world, including many in Mississippi, many grand and beautiful strains of foxglove may be seen. All of them have been developed from wild foxgloves of the Old World.

The variety "Gloxiniaeflora" is one of the old-time favorites for gardeners. It closely resembles the wild foxglove with its four-toot-tall handsome trusses of gloxinia-like blooms in a variety of colors. Another strain called "Shirley" grows up to six feet tall and has very large flowers.

Foxglove makes a welcome addition to any Mississippi summer garden and is certain to please growers and admirers with its stately beauty.

Growing foxglove.

Foxglove grows best when allowed to seed itself, but if one desires to raise it by sown seed, remember that because the seeds are very small and light, they should be mixed with fine sand in order to ensure even distribution. Seeds should be thinly covered with soil. Seedlings may be readily and safely transplanted in damp weather and should be spread out from six to nine inches apart.

The first year's growth of foxglove is a rosette of oval leaves. In the second year, the stem rises a yard or more and bears long, pointed leaves. The flowers, springing up in a spire from the rosette of downy leaves, appear in shades of white, cream, pink, primrose, or purple with their insides blotched or spotted with crimson, maroon, or chocolate.

The life of each flower, from the time the bud opens until the time it slips off its corolla, is about six days. An almost incredible number of seeds are produced, a single foxglove providing from one to two million seeds to ensure the plant's propagation.

Because foxgloves grow tall, they are usually planted in groups as a background to a flower border. Or you can position them between tall shrubs to add extra summer color. They are wonderful plants to attract hummingbirds to your Mississippi garden.

The foxglove is a favorite flower of the honeybee and is entirely developed by the frequent visits of this insect. For that reason, its tall and stately spikes of flowers are at their best in those sunny midsummer days when bees are busiest. The projecting lower lip of the corolla forms an ideal alighting platform for the bee as it pushes its way up the bell to get at the honey, which lies in a ring around the seed vessel at the top of the flower.

Foxglove does fairly well in full sun or light shade, but is happiest in a combination of flickering sunlight and shadows. This makes it an ideal plant where something tall is needed near trees and shrubs. The normal life of a foxglove plant is two seasons, but sometimes the roots, which are formed of numerous long and thick fibers, persist and throw up flowers for several seasons.