Digitalis purpureaL.

purple foxglove

WFO wfo-0000647394 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Digitalis purpurea, photographed by Mathieu Roumet
fig. a Mathieu Roumet, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205608470
Digitalis purpurea, photographed by Patrick Meurin
fig. b Patrick Meurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205514070
Digitalis purpurea, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. c Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205686022
Digitalis purpurea, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. d Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205806948
Digitalis purpurea, photographed by ahabo
fig. e ahabo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205548623
Digitalis purpurea, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. f Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205551142
Digitalis purpurea, photographed by Rachel Webster
fig. g Rachel Webster, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205699077
Digitalis purpurea, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. h Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205556429

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 10,802 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 10,802 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 55 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Digitalis alba Schrank
  • Digitalis amandiana Samp.
  • Digitalis campbelliana W.Baxter
  • Digitalis carnea Meigen & Weing.
  • Digitalis gloxinioides Carrière
  • Digitalis gyspergerae Rouy
  • Digitalis intermedia Lapeyr.
  • Digitalis libertiana Dumort.
  • Digitalis longiflora Lej.
  • Digitalis mauretanica (Humbert & Maire) Ivanina
  • Digitalis media Elmig.
  • Digitalis miniana Samp.
  • Digitalis nevadensis Kunze
  • Digitalis purpurascens Lej.
  • Digitalis purpurascens var. intermedia DC.
  • Digitalis purpurea f. alba (Schrank) K.Werner
  • Digitalis purpurea f. alpina K.Werner
  • Digitalis purpurea f. carnea (Meigen & Weing.) K.Werner
  • Digitalis purpurea f. glabrescens Merino
  • Digitalis purpurea f. humilis (Rouy) K.Werner
  • Digitalis purpurea f. longibracteata Henriq. ex Samp.
  • Digitalis purpurea f. nevadensis (Kunze) Samp.
  • Digitalis purpurea f. parviflora (Lej.) K.Werner
  • Digitalis purpurea f. tomentosa (Hoffmanns. & Link) Samp.

and 31 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.