Evening star., 1925-06-13

Throw those ugly-looking things
away, the gardener was advised, as
we came to the foXgloves, when TAX
ing stock of the garden last Fall.
In truth they did look good-for-
nothing. Huge cabbage-like leaves
shrouded the base of the stalk, some
OF them having turned brown, others
yellow, some still remaining green.
The plants were not more than a
foot high then. They survived the
winter, however, remaining green all
through, and this Spring began to
grow
Today they are the pride of the
garden, these floral stones which we
would have had the gardener reject.
Ihey are the very corner stone, as
IL were, OF the early Summer garden,
as they stand feet high, their stately
racemes or white, rose and lavender
bells swaying in the wind.
Fairy bell is a little known name
for the foxglove, but it is a very good
one, indeed. when one considers the
bell-shaped flowers on their long
spike, each bell being inverted. spotted
with purple inside.
other names for this plant. com
monty classed as a biennial, or short
nVed perennial, are fairy finger,
nnger flower and finger root, al
though these are practically never
used in this country.
Inc curiosity-provoking name, fox.
glove, comes from the Anglo Saxon.
foxes-glofa, probably given to the
HOVER because some poettcal wight
imagined that foxes wore the bells on
their paws.
Ihe scientific name is digitalis. so
gwen, according to Linnaeus, from its
finger shaped corolla.
x X x
one OF the great interests of this
plant to the home gardener is the
TACT that from it's seed and leaves is
secured digitalin, or digitalis, as it is
more commonly called, the well known
and widely used heart tonic.
Some way or other the foxglove
impressed one as being just that sort
or flower! 1t is such a dwarf the
hrst year so unsightly and unlovely,
ana yet one is conscious of power
somewhere in its makeup.
L never look at a foxgloye during
Its first year but what 1 think of the
story of the Ugly Duckling, which
later blossomed into the beautiful
White Swan. All the time, under the
sneers Of the other ducks, it has
locked up in 1t great possibilities.
There is more in me-" the fox
6iONc SStIlS W say.
Any gardener who is patient will see
that this is true the second Summer,
when the stalks shoot up to four or
five feet, and the leaves thin out and
become more symmetrical.
Behind all this beauty. however,
turks the medicinal powers locked
away in this growing thing. Quinine
is one of the sure-fire remedies in
medicine; digitalis is another.
Many drugs are given with more
or less problematical results, but qui-
nine usually does what it is supposed
to do, in certain fevers, and digitalis,
properly administered, gets results as
a cardiac tonic.
The interesting thing is that digi-
talin is secured from the common
foxglove of our garden, Digitalis Pur-
purea. The medicine, chemically, is
q white crystalline glucoside.
Its chemical formula is carbon 35,
hydrogan SO and oxygen IA, being an
other example of the multitudinous
products which nature can manufac-
ture out of the same materials. 1t
seems to me that a chemist ought to
be able to manufacture it artificially.
X
Webster's dictionary says that the
leaves of the foxglove yield the inn
portant drug, digitalis,' while the
Encyclopedia Americana declares that
digitalin is the commercial name for
a compound substance extracted