Lessons from a Foxglove

I've just returned from England, where foxgloves were in bloom across the countryside—in fields, at roadsides and in gardens, from south to north. So I was especially piqued to see John Ruskin’s writing on this familiar flower in an exhibit at his Lake District home, Brantwood, (which is itself surrounded by vast gardens, including foxgloves!)

Foxgloves near Keswick, England

Having observed these tall spikes, the flowers along their length, Ruskin muses on imperfection:

It is the sign of life in a mortal body...Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove blossom,—a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom,—is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty.

That there could be anything beautiful in what looks like decay, ostensible death, resonates with the Christian faith Ruskin held and struggled with, its promise of life from death. If we look closer at the petals fading and dropping from the foxglove, here we see a vibrant fruit forming, with many tiny seeds inside.

My attempt at a foxglove

Such yielding observed in nature, the plant relinquishing blossoms to produce seeds, is something Ruskin’s artistic protégé and missionary, Lilias Trotter, explores in her Parables of the Cross and Parables of the Christ-Life.

In the latter, she likens pollination to receiving the Life of God: “in the little flower-heart, while ‘that which is natural’ begins to fade, ‘that which is spiritual’ dawns. The seed-vessel with its hidden treasure—the ultimate object of this miracle quickening—begins immediately to form.” In Parables of the Cross, the surrender of buttercups and irises, gorse and sphagnum, grasses and leaves, witness that death is a threshold to life. "Think of the wonder of it—the Fountain of Life Himself wells up within us, taking the place of all that we have delivered, bit by bit, into His grave. 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'" A wonder indeed!

So even the foxglove blossom which Ruskin describes as spent is nascent—it is not the fresh bud at the plant’s tip but rather a fruit, a death that brings life, deficiency which becomes a source of beauty.

---

Sources:

John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, Volume 1, https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancaster-university/content-assets/documents/ruskin/9-11StonesofVenice.pdf

Lilias Trotter, Parables of the Christ-Life, Facsimile Edition, Lilias Trotter Legacy Inc, 2020

Lilias Trotter, Parables of the Cross, Illustrated Edition, Dodo Press