Or: It’s all natural and plant based!
Wild digitalis is blooming in the woods all around and the family tradition of warning the kids away because it’s fucking poisonous keeps living on. “Keeping away” fortunately does not mean “do not take pictures”, so you get some treats. Sadly I think it’s a plant that defies photography: Take a pic of the whole plant and the beautiful individual flowers don’t show up right, take one of an individual flower and the beauty of the whole is lost.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The bugs apparently don’t mind.
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I also found a white one. While there are bred white garden varieties, I don’t think that this one is, since it’s a far way form any garden and in the middle of a sea of purple ones.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
A poison flower for a poison age?
I agree with the difficulty in photographing foxglove -- when you get a close-up, you lose the stateliness of the full spike of flowers, but getting a full length shot means losing the beautiful detail of the individual blooms.
I’ve never encountered Foxglove in the wild, but I understand your frustration with photographing them. I find the same thing with sweet peas. Your first photo looks like a watercolour painting and I love the close-ups. The dark spots on the flowers are very pretty.
I completely agree with your assessment of digitalis’s photographic properties, I made the same experience last year.
But bumblebees love them, so if one wants to make good bumblebee pictures, hanging around a patch of digitalis is good strategy.
The white one is a wild one, they pop up from time to time in any wild population, just the way while most fritillaries are purple you get the odd white one in any wild population.
Interesting. Foxglove is common around here but I don’t remember ever finding a white one. They look lovely!