Foxgloves are wonderful flowers that come and go on Littleworth Common. I don't propose to dwell too long on the reason for their name but I found this on Wikipedia:
The name is recorded in Old English as 'foxes glofe/glofa' or 'fox's glove'. Over time, folk myths obscured the literal origins of the name, insinuating that foxes wore the flowers on their paws to silence their movements as they stealthily hunted their prey. The woody hillsides where the foxes made their dens were often covered with the toxic flowers. Some of the more menacing names, such as "witch's glove", reference the toxicity of the plant.
In 2024 Littleworth Common was going through an interesting time with proposals to turn the 1832 Jolly Woodman pub into a Hindu Place of Learning (a.k.a. Temple).In a moment of fantasy I saw some similarity between what was going on and the stealthy movements of a fox.
I tried to visualise this ... My mother had acquired a stuffed fox many years ago so I wondered if I could see what this would look like with gloves like the flower.
