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| Got my first foxgloves for the garden last year at a swap. I know that I got foxgloves because they were in bloom. I got one very tall beautiful purple/pink foxglove and a couple dwarf yellow foxgloves. Now I have this in the garden, and last year's beautiful purple foxglove changed to this. What kind of foxglove is this? it has the foliage of the taller foxglove. The dwarf variety has a much smoother and narrower leaf. The bloom clearly does not have a trumpet flower at all, and it's significantly shorter than it should be. I've searched and searched for info on a non-trumpet foxglove and have found nothing. Can anybody tell me what's going on here?!
This is the whole plant:
Close up of that bloom, clearly NOT a trumpet bloom!
And just for good measure I have a second one in my holding bed:
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Follow-Up Postings:
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| Looks like a Verbascum to me--and quite a nice one! They do self-seed, if that's what this is. You might have gotten a tiny one mixed in with the foxglove last year. And the purple and pink foxgoves do not usually bloom a second year in our area. Digitalis purpurea is a biennial--leaves the first year, flowers the second year, then--gone. But they do self-seed so you may get babies down the road. |
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| This is a Verbascum nigrum , wild type. White variety Album is a long lived, clump forming perennial. They have to be observed very closely , otherwise you will have millions of them from selfseeding. The roots on these plants are gigantic.The leaves have a characteristic smell, not pleasant to me |
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- Posted by gardenweed_z6a 5b/6a N CT (My Page) on Mon, Aug 8, 11 at 11:25
| Definitely verbascum/mullein but not sure of the cultivar. Mine (V. Milkshake) bloomed this year for the first time. Loved the flowers but one look at all the seedpods and I cut the stalks down. |
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| Definitely a verbascum, aka moth mullien. I love these pretty wildflowers, and there are cultivars. Usually I let them reseed, they are easily pulled out where I don't want them or transplanted to where I do. Sometimes I scatter the seed among other perennials where they come up like a gentle yellow rocket. They can always be deadheaded if you don't want them to reseed but I kind of like the surprises of them popping up in odd, different places every year. They look wonderful with liatris, tall garden phlox, or other purple perennials. |
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- Posted by deanna_in_nh 5a/4b (My Page) on Mon, Aug 8, 11 at 14:31
| Well, I'll be. It sure fooled me! Thanks for the ID. I sure hope my one foxglove seeded and that I get more next year. I do have some that I WS, but they're still in the pot (embarrassed cough here). Construction project gone 6 weeks too late to blame for that. Naturally, I'm not to blame (embarrassed cough again, nose growing slightly longer). You all are the place to go to for all the answers--thank you! I guess I'll enjoy my mullein, which is more enjoyable than a mullet or a mutton, even though they sound the same. |
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- Posted by gardenweed_z6a 5b/6a N CT (My Page) on Mon, Aug 8, 11 at 18:24
| Think of it as ver-BAS-cum instead of mullein...might make you think more highly of it. (;-p) Or else pronounce it mull-EEN. I've never grown it before but got seeds in trade (as a bonus) and WS it last year. All I got the first year was the basal foliage and thought, meh. Half the plants up and died on me but the few that survived were really very pretty when they bloomed. My little green acre doesn't get much full sun so they only grew about 4 ft. tall. I gave a couple clumps to my neighbor who planted them in the beds around her swimming pool where they get full sun. Holy cow!! They grew 5-6 ft. tall and bloomed like crazy! I'm impressed that the stalks remain erect and don't need staking, even in my part-sun beds. |
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- Posted by gardenweed_z6a 5b/6a N CT (My Page) on Mon, Aug 8, 11 at 18:40
| Oh yeah, I forgot to post this above:
It's drought tolerant but not invasive, doesn't need pinching/staking/dead-heading and can take less than full sun. What's not to like? |
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- Posted by deanna_in_nh 5a/4b (My Page) on Mon, Aug 8, 11 at 19:32
| Oh, yes, mull-EEN is much better than MULL-in in terms of elegance and impressiveness! I like mull-EEN even better than ver-BAS-cum, which sounds like verbatim, which is not an elegant or poetic word. Thanks for the encouragement. Despite full sun mine did not get very tall at all, only between 2-3 feet. But, I notice that it likes neutral to alkaline soils, as do foxgloves. New Hampshire specializes in acidic soils, so I've need to do just a little bit of liming around them and future foxgloves. I wish it weren't biennial. It is hard to plan where to sprinkle the lime when the existing one dies out and you're depending on new seedlings. Do all biennials die after flowering? For some reason I thought biennial only meant it skipped a year, like one plant would bloom in year 2, skip year 3, bloom in year 4, skip year 5, etc. But, I'm gathering that a whole bunch of them die after flowering. As for my foxglove reseeding, I thought about it today and realized I've washed that possibility down the toilet. I've been doing a lot of weeding of purslane in that area, and I wouldn't be surprised if seedlings were pulled out. How do you tell the difference in the foliage between foxglove and verbascum? I've done a few web searches and am coming up with nothing practical. |
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- Posted by deanna_in_nh 5a/4b (My Page) on Mon, Aug 8, 11 at 21:11
| Need to clarify that my thoughts on biennials dying was for the foxglove, because the verbascum is, according to the all-knowing web, a perennial. Wish those foxgloves weren't biennials! |
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- Posted by echinaceamaniac 7 (My Page) on Mon, Aug 8, 11 at 23:14
| That plant is beautiful! I'd keep it and just plant some Foxglove seeds to go with it. I wish one of those would come up in my garden! |
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| Deanna, Verbascum cultivars like this won't become weedy in your garden. Maybe in other parts of the country but not where you and I live. They have been short-lived perennials for me. The wild mullein is like your plant on steroids. Very large leaves, very tall. It grows it waste places in full sun and you would recognize it if you saw it. It's quite striking, actually. |
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| I think the slightly brighter green, broader-leafed plants growing around the Verbascum in the first picture might be foxgloves. Verbascum leaves smell bad, so you could do a sniff test to distinguish between the two. On a side note, that Verbascum looks exactly like the ones I have in my garden, except I have the white ones too. I had thought they were Verbascum chaixii but now I'm thinking they must be Verbascum nigrum. Does anyone know how to tell those two species apart? |
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- Posted by gardenweed_z6a 5b/6a N CT (My Page) on Thu, Aug 11, 11 at 17:57
| How do you tell the difference in the foliage between foxglove and verbascum? I've done a few web searches and am coming up with nothing practical. Here's my excrutiatingly detailed, technical description: verBAScum foliage is crinkly/wrinkled but not fuzzy or hairy. Foxglove foliage (if memory serves me correctly) is smoother but a little fuzzy. The verbascum in my photo is V. chaixii var. album 'Milk Shake.' Does that help? |
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- Posted by deanna_in_nh 5a/4b (My Page) on Thu, Aug 11, 11 at 20:36
| Actually, gardenweed, I think your technical terms are a little off, but close. The verbascum would be crinklus wrinklus nonfuzzum and the foxglove would be smoothus microfuzzum. Right? |
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| brody, Verbascum chiaxii is called nettle-leaved, so its leaves should resemble those of the nettle. But I have not seen it myself. To the others: it can become weedy if you let is self-seed. I've been there. Although the wild form(yellow) is often described as biennial, the white cultivars proved to be very long-lived here in Denmark, bulding giant clumps. The roots are very thick and long. The plant can choke small neighbours. It is most attractive as young. Big old clumps have many stalks, but the individual flowers get smaller. |
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- Posted by trovesoftrilliums 5 (My Page) on Mon, Aug 15, 11 at 18:48
| In your second picture, the small bright green leaves on bottom right with the long white petiole MIGHt be foxglove seedling. Any signs of miccrofuzzums on it? My foxglve seedlings tend to have long stems like that. |
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