Foxgloves changing colour

twopenny

So this new garden of mine. Got a bit carried away last year with empty beds and planted all sorts that I'd seen and desired in other peoples gardens.

I splurged on 3 foxgloves, one was yellow, one pink and one cream. To my surprise they overwintered but now they are in flower they've maintained the crowded flowerheads of the cultivars but come up he normal colour of foxgloves.

Will this gardencentre ones keep overwintering?

Do they always revert to the original foxglove colour in a second year?

I'd be grateful to know because if they do I need to relocate them next winter.

MovingForwards

It's down to pollination and the bees going from one to another. Did you keep any seeds from when they first flowered?

Farway

I thought foxgloves were biennial so perhaps the ones now flowering are not the originals?

peewhyeff

Farway said:

I thought foxgloves were biennial so perhaps the ones now flowering are not the originals?

Me too. It's not the original plant coming through and flowering again. Usually what appears in subsequent years are self-sown seedlings, and seldom appear as same colour as parent plant. Love them just the same. 

Davesnave

Not all foxgloves are biennial, but so long as their ID is just 'foxgloves' we have no reason to suspect these are anything other than self-sown progeny.

twopenny

Thanks. The plants are definitely the ones I bought from the garden centre last year and a lot bigger and denser than wild ones. It's a small garden and new so not enough plants and I've been out there all the time still creating so I would notice dead ones or seedlings. 

Was grass and gravel for the last 70yrs. I've also known the area ie tennis courts for 60yrs when it was tarmaced and no foxgloves grew here.

I have saved last years seed and looking for somewhere to plant them to see what comes up but there's no room in my tiny plot.

There is a smaller one yet to bloom. I wonder what  colour that will be? That might give me an answer.