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Foxglove
Digitalis Purpurea

Dramatic flower of June. The German name “Fingerhut” translates as “thimble”. Foxgloves have strong links with fairies and goblins, which shows in many of its Celtic names. Unopened flowers can be popped, so many local names such as  “Pop Ladders” refer to this. Inside the flower you’ll see stiff hairs rising from its base which heavier Bumble Bees can push past, but smaller Honey Bees cannot. Bumbles unknowingly transfer pollen on their backs.

The Foxglove’s family includes a range of very diverse plants, including Mulleins, Snapdragons, Toadflaxes, Figworts, Speedwells, Yellow Rattle and Eyebright. Foxgloves are one of the many highly poisonous plants which, used correctly, have important medical uses. The action on the heart muscle was discovered by Dr William Withering in 1785. Digitalis is still extracted from Foxglove leaves. Its seeds are small and numerous. The plant is biennial, taking 2 years to develop, dying after flowering. When woodland is felled, Foxgloves may flower in thousands, the seeds having long been dormant, awaiting the return of the light.

Knapweed
Centaurea nigra

This member of the Daisy Family rather resembles a thistle in its flowerhead, but is not prickly. It's closely related to Cornflower. Common Knapweed is one of the most common meadow flowers in the British Isles. It is also very variable.  You will readily find differences between the leaves and the flowers of neighbouring plants. In particular, some plants will have flowers with outer rays, others won’t. Knapweed is often called “Hardheads” from the flower buds before they open.  Regional names include Chimneysweep’s Brushes and Paint Brushes.

It is an excellent wildlife plant. The flowers attract butterflies, bees and many other insects. The seeds ripen very quickly, within a couple of weeks. They lie loose in the open flowerhead and are highly attractive to Goldfinches. Knapweeds can be found in flower from May to October, but many forms of the plant have a much shorter flowering season. Modern herbals and wild food books appear not to mention Knapweed, but Nicholas Culpepper’s 1648 Herbal gives, as for so many other plants, a bewildering variety of medical uses.

Ivy Broomrape
Orobanche edere 

All plants in the Broomrape Family are parasitical as they have no chlorophyll to capture solar energy. Their roots tap into those of other plants to obtain nutrients and water. Ivy Broomrape can be found on Fig and Ivy in the Mediterranean. Ivy Broomrape lives entirely underground except for its purple-veined cream flowers which appear in June and July. Its minute seeds are wind-dispersed and the dead flower stems can be seen all year. 

Broomrape doesn’t take enough from its host Ivy to harm it whereas the other parasitic UK plants, Dodders, may kill their host. Three of our British orchids, including the Bird’s Nest Orchid don't make chlorophyll. They're not parasitic, but saprophytic, they feed on dead, decaying vegetation. Some plants are semi-parasites; they have green leaves and make their own sugars, but take water and minerals from other plants. Yellow Rattle, which grows in the Park, is a semi-parasite, as is Mistletoe.

Stinking Iris
Iris foetidissima   

This plant of the Iris family is most colourful in autumn and winter, when loose seed pods split to show three rows of orange berries “like small blood oranges”. These have developed from the rather inconspicuous, usually pale grey-purple (sometimes yellow) flowers in June/July. Its leaves smell, though not as strongly as the name suggests. It has two other common names. One is “Roast Beef Plant” - also an interpretation of the smell of the crushed leaves. The other, is “Gladdon”, a reference to the sword-like shape of the leaves, from the Latin “gladiolus”, a little sword. It is purgative and proportions of the roots were used to make purging drinks.

Nicholas Culpeper’s “Complete Herbal”, 1653 edition, attributes the following to Gladdon: “outwardly, they help the king’s evil [a glandular skin disease], soften hard swellings, draw out broken bones; inwardly taken they help convulsions, ruptures, bruises, infirmities of the lungs.”