Plant ID request!

[twobluechickens]

This one has me a bit stumped. It's looked like this since I bought the house this time last year. 99% sure it's a Digitalis, but which one? Lanata? Lutea? I don't think it's ferruginea.

Suggestions also welcome for the 1% of me that's not sure it's a Digitalis!

Maybe you could ask here - https://www.thebotanicnursery.co.uk/nationalcollectionofdigitalis

It's a foxglove 🙂

I know, I’ve said so in the post you’ve quoted 😁

The flowers are too large for D. lutea. I’ve not grown D. lanata but it gets its names for the “wooly indumentum” on its leaves. Could it be D. grandiflora? Like lutea but with “foxglove sized” flowers.

Could be. Never have I willed a plant to flower so much 😁

Could it be digplexis? Mine has leaves with jaggeddy edges so it's not the same, but has that crinkly look to the leaves.

Digiplexis is new to me. It’s a hybrid between Digitalis purpurea (our native foxglove) and Isoplexis canariensis, botanically Digitalis x vallinii. Quite startlingly bright, so you’ll know once the flowers open

Isoplexis is in fact a subdivision of Digitalis. So the parent should be called Digitalis canariense, although Isoplexis is still used in horticulture - it’s apparently been going back and forth for the last 300 years. Differs from the rest of Digitalis in having a large upper lip, thought to be adapted for bird pollination.

Interesting, I’m familiar with Isoplexis but not Digiplexis!

If nothing else, I will be adding more species foxgloves to the garden because they are beautiful.

Mine's not actually startlingly bright, although if you take a photo close up of the flowers it looks it. But the flowers are smaller than in a normal foxglove, and the outer colour which is the one you see most, is a sort of dusty shade, so the overall effect is fairly muted.

Lovely plant though, I'm very fond of it.

Finally flowering and I’m none the wiser! Going to do as @EBearhug suggested and email the Botanic Nursery. It’s a beautiful thing, my thumb for scale - the flowers are much smaller than our native foxgloves.

I’m wondering if it’s ’Glory of Roundway’ but the flowers don’t look quite right (mine seem to be in two parts, whereas that has entire flowers).

That is pretty!

I had something similar. I knew I didn't plant it so assumed it was a naturally occurring hybrid between D. lutea and common foxgloves. Both seed around promiscuously in the area it cropped up. Really pretty but gorged on by (probably) capsid bugs. Composted it. Another new cultivar lost to history!

I inherited this when I bought the house; I think it was planted as there aren’t any other foxgloves in the back garden, but you do now have me wondering about self-seeders because my neighbours have all sorts of interesting exotics in their garden. Hopefully it’s a perennial.

the flowers are much smaller than our native foxgloves.
I saw a foxglove with smaller-than-usual flowers at an NGS over the weekend. It was quite tall (?four foot-ish?) but the flowers were small - so small that I didn't think that it was a foxglove so I asked about it. It was Digitalis Parviflora, a short-lived perennial. It was all over the garden (clay), apparently it is a prolific self-seeder.

That’s a beautiful thing, @senua - I’d like a few of those for the garden.

You're gonna have to save the seeds. Digitalis Twobluechickens now exists.

I’ll be rich beyond my wildest dreams 😂

Is it digitalis obscura Dusky Maid?

although the leaves don't look right actually.

Ooh it’s very pretty, whatever it is.

It’s not, but that is very pretty too! The Botanic Nursery think it’s a garden hybrid of D. lutea and D. purpurea - not uncommon apparently. I will save seed if it produces any!

So @MaxandMeg called it right 👏👏👏

It'll be interesting to see how its progeny turn out - presumably may be quite variable.