For those who think there is no issue and no more education needs done I would disagree. I didn't know anything about the toxicity of foxgloves and my 7 year old son has got into wildflowers during the lockdowns. As children tend to do he was admiring the beauty of a foxglove in a forest this week and also as children are very prone to do he put his finger into one of the belllike - fingerlike flowers just for the fun of it. His finger got the pollen on him but as I had never heard of any danger with foxgloves (they are everywhere in ireland) i didn't think anything of it. I said he should wipe the pollen off on some grass but I didn't really think there would be any problem. About half an hour later he had a packet of raisins further into the forest. (We even used hand sanitiser first) A few hours later he started feeling very unwell and no appetite for any dinner and eventually threw up multiple times everywhere. Because of covid restrictions we haven't been going anywhere, and he has had no contact with people as school is out. So I know it wasn't a bug. I think it really would help parents to know about the dangers as think how easily a young child could do the same thing and enjoy putting their fingers into the flowers, without knowing the pollen is dangerous. We don't need ot be afraid of everything but when even the pollen is dangerous in foxgloves a little wider awareness would really help.

In the 1950s, on the Gunflint Trail (Zone 2b), my late mother started foxgloves from seed. They were mixed colors -- white, yellow, pink, and lavender. She had them in a west-facing garden bed where they were cross-pollinated and the seedlings proliferated. Some seedling blooms were streaked bi-colors and mixed colors on a single bloom, very interesting. Long story short, they were overtaking the space and she thinned them out and tossed the extras on a compost pile on a slope at the foot of her vegetable garden. A couple of years later there was a new colony and from that, in the early 1980s, she and my dad brought a few plants to their new home on the shore of Lake Superior (Zone 4). Offspring of those foxgloves still are growing profusely on a shale south-facing bank. Most foxgloves are biennials, so if you start from seed you have nonflowering rosettes that year and the second year you have blooms that may self-seed, producing flowers from seedlings in the second year. In perfect conditions, they may continue producing blooms for one or two more years. They seem to thrive in poor soil provided that they have enough (but not too much) moisture. You might try starting from seed in successive years so you always have bloomers. Wet summers and falls lend to crown rot. I think I read that only the yellow ones are true perennials but even they are not long-lived. I have purchased excellent nursery stock and I have transplanted foxglove rosettes from those original plants and they do not survive winter in my Golden Valley garden.

Thanks! I do have both larkspur and Delphiniums, and don't have any problem with them, so far anyway, they are both on thier second year. Will Monkshood grow in part shade? If the foxgloves I put in this year don't come back, that is an option for that spot. I will have to make sure to mulch the foxgloves this fall. I guess it is the tall colorful spikes I am looking for, I have a lot of blue in the garden already. I have a number of island gardens, I bet the foxgloves would grow great in what I call my front garden, everything does! But it is already soo full there is no room for more. And no space to expand it. This bed just happens to be in the one spot in the yard, where the oak leaves blow in and mulch it, with no help from me. And the largest snowbank in the yard is over it every year. Perfect! Jenny P

Digitalis purpurea is common throughout the PNW. The plants are usually biennial or short lived perennials and will self sow. That means a leafy rosette of foliage the first year, flowers the second. They will sometimes die out after flowering to be replaced with new self sown seedlings, or in our mild climate may live another year or two to produce more flowers. If you had the clumps of leaves last year and what you have is really foxglove (digitalis), you will surely have flowers this year. If you find they are 'invading' your beds and taking over space, crowding other plants, there's no need to keep them all. Take out what has placed itself inappropriately, enjoy those you've left.