How do foxgloves work...

Morning all

I've got foxgloves flowering this year and I have a couple of silly questions. I understand how they work in theory as a biennial. This year I leave the flower stem so it can self-seed. Next year, all being well there will be a plant (but no flower). The following year there will be a plant with flower.

In practice -

• Will the first year plant just look like a foxglove but without a flower stem?
• What happens in the winter between the first and second year? Would I cut it back like a perennial or just leave it?

Thank you!

 

Not silly to ask at all
The original plants [that you're leaving to set seed] will die off, or occasionally re flower, so you can just leave them in situ.
I cut off the old stems before they've got to seed stage if I don't want any more seeding around. That can be tricky because of the size of the flowering stems - you get some flowers at seed stage, while other parts are still in bud. Small seedlings can easily be removed though if there are too many of them.

The new plant [growing from the seed] will be a rosette of foliage.

 

Hi @PassTheFox yes, the seedlings will grow into rosettes - possibly millions if they like you! You don't have to do anything - there's nothing to cut back. They will grow on, getting larger until they throw a flower stem. You may have to thin them out, or move them to where you want them. They don't die away over winter so it's easy to keep watch on them. I prefer white ones, so I have pulled out any I see with darker midribs to the leaves, as they flower purple. Now I have a self-sustaining population of mostly white ones.

 

When the seeds are ripe I cut a stem and waft it over the border where I’d like more foxgloves … it spreads the new plants out a bit and saved them being too overcrowded and needing thinning out

 

Great! This is very useful

@fairygirl some of mine are at that stage, half seed pods and half flower

I had no idea you could tell the flower colour from the plant itself @CarolineL! At the moment I'll take whatever will grow but I expect overtime I'll get a bit more discerning about it

Love this approach @Dovefromabove - saves transplanting myself

 

I do the same as @Dovefromabove , scatter the seeds around where I'd like plants to grow. Sometimes it works, sometimes not but there are literally thousands of seeds from each spike so plenty to play with. The ones that look as if they might be white (no purple in the leaf veins) sometimes turn out to be a light pink/purple!

 

I bought 6 little foxglove plants 3 years ago which flowered. I scattered their seeds. The next year the 6 flowered again and there were loads of seedlings. I had to thin them out and this year I had loads of flowers. I had flowers each year, which I wasn't expecting! I'll cut some down this year and I'll leave some for seeds. I like the purple ones best.

 

They look stunning @Busy-Lizzie

 

I forgot to mention the colouring can determine the flower colour @PassTheFox , so that was great that @CarolineL gave you that helpful info. Always handy if you don't want the darker ones.
I'm the same as her in that I want mainly whites, and also the ones with dark purple spotting, but those often revert unfortunately.
You can also transplant small seedlings to places where you want them. They're quite easy to do, but they're also easy to pull out if you have colours you don't like.

 

If I want foxgloves that flower next year I would sow them now or in the next month or two. The ones that are now 6ft tall in my garden are sown from seed I collected from last year's flowers. They can take longer to flower but if potted on or given the space they do flower quickly while if they are crowded or not given space, then they can be slower to flower.
I know they are biennials but if you start early enough then they don't need a full season to grow on before they will flower. I have had foxgloves, wallflowers and hollyhocks, amongst others, flower the next year from September sowings. They also extend the flowering season slightly as earlier sown ones flower slightly earlier.

 

The way many biennials work (including wild-type foxgloves for me) is that they flower in late spring/early summer, seed ripens and is shed around mid-summer(ish), germinates and makes basal leaves etc through late summer and autumn, sits through the winter then grows some more in spring and flowers late spring/early summer.
So, if your foxgloves are already in flower and you let them set some seed from the first flush, you should get flowers from those seed next year. If you deadhead the first flush of flower spikes before the seed is set, to get more flowers this year, the seed setting will be later and the resulting new plants might not get big enough to flower next year.

 

I have foxgloves everywhere this year. A couple of them are carrying unusual flowers.

 

That's fasciation in your pix @Fritillary , which happens to various plants, and foxgloves often have it.
There's no real reasoning to it, and no one seems to know exactly how or why it happens, but many people think it's simply buds fusing together due to certain weather conditions, especially if there's sudden swings from one type to another, or something similar.