The Launch of the Foxglove

We’ve recently renovated and renamed a small fibreglass rowing dingy to take out on our wildlife pond! Dr. Orton explains our plans to use the boat to monitor wildlife, explores the ecology and folklore of its namesake, the foxglove, and discovers the wildlife of our lakes and ponds!*

In Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (my favourite book), Ratty the water vole (my favourite character) says to his friend Mole, “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

We’ve had a small rowing boat since we created our wildlife pond in the 1990s, but it was badly in need of repair and a new coat of paint. The whole process started with sanding down the old paint to give a smooth surface.

I also needed runners for the bottom and a keel that would need to be fibreglassed into place. This was done with the help of a local carpenter, who shaped the wood. Then I chose a nice British Racing Green for the trim, seats and boat name!

Foxgloves and Foxes

As huge foxes fans, we had to name the boat after something fox-related, so we settled on The Foxglove!

When I was looking into this, I read a lot of blogs saying that the name “foxglove” goes back to Anglo-Saxon times and also that this comes from the idea that foxes wore the flowers on their paws so they could hunt silently. I couldn’t find any references to this before the twentieth century (although that doesn’t mean that people didn’t record this tradition orally!) and there is a big argument in scholarly literature about whether the foxglove is really associated with foxes or fairies.

Victorian polymath William Henry Fox Talbot argued in his (1847) English Etymologies  that the word “foxglove” is linked to the fairy folk because it was originally “folk’s glove” and that in some places, they are called “witches’ thimbles.” The link to traditional herbal medicine is also found in William Withering’s (1785) An Account of the Foxglove,  in which he writes, “In the year 1775, my opinion was asked concerning a family receipt for the cure of the dropsy [linked to what we would call heart failure or kidney or liver problems today]. I was told that it had long been kept a secret by an old woman in Shropshire, who had sometimes made cures after the more regular practitioners had failed.”

Having said this, etymologist Anatoly Liberman argues that the word foxglove “does go back to a word that means exactly this (fox-glove), and all attempts to explain it as a ‘perversion’ of some other compound or phrase are misguided, but the reason for endowing the flower with such an incomprehensible name has not been discovered.” Liberman points out that in Old English, from which we get the word, has  no fairies of the kind that might wear flowers for gloves “so all talk about good folk’s glove(s) lacks foundation.” Liberman  also dismisses the idea that “foxglove” comes from “foxes-glew” (a ring of bells hung on an arched support).

So foxgloves do have something to do with foxes but exactly what remains a mystery!

Foxgloves are Important

Foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea) can grow up to two metres tall. Look out for their purple-pink flowers between June and September: you will find them on heathland, at roadside verges, on woodland edges and in gardens and hedgerows.

Caterpillars of the foxglove pug moth feed exclusively on fox gloves! This moth, and other generalist moths and butterflies will also visit, so this means that foxgloves are important in our ecosystems.

Bumblebees (Bombus hortorum) love foxgloves and are their main pollinators! These are closely followed by common carder bees (Bombus pascuorum) and together these two species make up the majority of insect visitors to foxgloves.

This tells us a lot about why it suits foxgloves to be shaped as they are: researchers from the University of Sussex found that American foxgloves (which arrived there 200 years ago) evolved longer corolla (flower tube) length, possibly to adapt for hummingbirds.

Charles Darwin, in his (1876) The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom describes the pollination of foxgloves by bees: “The lower and inner side of the mouth of the corolla is thickly clothed with hairs, and these collect so much of the fallen pollen that I have seen the under surface of a humble-bee thickly dusted with it; but this can never be applied to the stigma, as the bees in retreating do not turn their under surfaces upwards. I was therefore puzzled whether these hairs were of any use; but Mr. Belt has, I think, explained their use: the smaller kinds of bees are not fitted to fertilise the flowers, and if they were allowed to enter easily they would steal much nectar, and fewer large bees would haunt the flowers. Humble-bees can crawl into the dependent flowers with the greatest ease, using the “hairs as footholds while sucking the honey; but the smaller bees are impeded by them, and when, having at length struggled through them, they reach the slippery precipice above, they are completely baffled.”

Foxgloves attract long-tongued pollinators, but in our recent blog post on short-tongued insects and robber bees, we saw that short-tongued pollinators can sometimes “rob” nectar from a flower by making a hole in the back of the flower without pollinating it. One study in Ecology and Evolution found that foxglove nectar is rarely “robbed” in the plant’s native range, but intense robbing goes on in areas to which the foxglove has been introduced!

Foxgloves help humans by providing a drug that treats abnormal heart rhythms and sometimes heart failure. However, they are poisonous when consumed directly, so be careful if you handle it.

How the Foxglove will Help Wildlife

Firstly, I’m hoping to use The Foxglove to explore the banks of the pond. I thought I saw water voles in 2022, but haven’t seen any sign of them since. It would be incredible to have them!

I’m also planning to use a wildlife camera on the island. Our pond is too small for otters to live there permanently, but we did capture a visiting otter on our woodland wildlife camera a few weeks ago!

Finally, I’d like to keep an eye on the creatures who make use of the surface and plant life of the pond. I’ve already seen lots of blue-tailed damselflies and common blue damselflies. I’m hoping to see some dragonflies, too.

I’ve already written about why fallen trees are beneficial in our woodlands, but the fallen trees we have over the water is also great for wildlife! Specifically for dragonflies and damselflies, trees provide habitat structures that support their successful emergence after their nymph stage. Woody debris like our fallen trees are an important microhabitat for dragonflies and damselflies! 

Common Blue Damselfly

Dragonflies and damselflies are important because as they transfer nutrients from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. Dragonflies are also efficient predators that consume hundreds of thousands of insects, which means they can lower the risk of mosquito-borne and other diseases! They’re a great indicator of the health of an ecosystem!

Find Out More

If you’re interested in conservation and wildlife, we have a blog series on British wildlife and a series on the people and wildlife of South Asia, from the altitudes of the Himalayas to the dense mangrove forests of Bangladesh!

We also offer online private tuition in our interdisciplinary course, Culture and Conservation, in which you can explore the links between our natural and cultural heritage and study wildlife and cultures from across the world! This is a template of a possible study route and can be combined, adapted, or designed from scratch to suit your interests and goals.

Dr. Orton will work with you to design a course of private tutorials tailored to your needs, ability and schedule. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to find out more!

Do More

For those who would like to take action to preserve our wild spaces, there’s plenty you can do. Even if you don’t have a big garden, there are plenty of things you can do to help biodiversity in your area. Why not put up a solitary bee nesting box or insect home, create a woodpile as a habitat for small creatures or leave small areas of your garden to go wild?

Think about your own area and how you can protect vulnerable but important parts of your own environment. You might even want to start your own project investigating the cultural importance of wildlife in your area. Dr. Orton works with independent scholars undertaking their own research for an independent project, people writing a book or simply those who have a personal interest. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to get started!

Reach Out

We’d love to see what you’re doing to help wildlife in your area. Follow the Conservation highlight reel on the Orton Academy Instagram to see what we’re getting up to and tag us in to any snaps you put up!

*We use the word “pond” and “lake” interchangeably as it has characteristics of both.