The etymology of "foxglove"

From the Oxford University Press blog:

On the face of it, the word foxglove makes no sense, because foxes do without gloves and even without hands.  The scientific name of foxglove is Digitalis (the best-known variety is Digitalis purpurea), apparently, because it looks like a thimble and can be easily fitted over a finger (Latin digitus “finger”).  See more about it below.  The puzzling part is fox-.  It was such even in Old English (foxes glofa, though the name seems to have been applied to a different plant)...

The idea to trace foxglove to folk’s (or folks’) glove is relatively recent... “In Welsh this flower is called by the beautiful name of maneg ellyllon, or the fairies’ glove.  Now, in the days of our ancestors, as every one knows, these little elves were called in English ‘the good folks.’  No doubt, then, these flowers were called ‘the good folks’ gloves’, a name since shortened into foxgloves [sic].  The plant is called in French gantelée (little glove); in Latin, digitalis, and in German, fingerhut (thimble)... In addition to what was said before, it may be reminded that these flowers are called in Teviotdale [Scotland] witches’ thimbles, agreeing partly with the Welsh; the witches, however, taking the place of the fairies.”..

By a funny coincidence, the Latin name digitalis was coined in 1542 by Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), a famous scholar and one of the founders of modern botany (German Fuchs means “fox”).  The flower fuchsia, whose pronunciation is a torture to foreigners, and the color fuchsia (the color of digitalis purpurea!) are named after him...

But the column goes on to explain that all the aforementioned (re the "fox" part) is too facile and presumptive, and likely wrong.

Belief in fairies, as in Midsummer Night’s Dream, has no roots in Old English, so all talk about good folk’s glove(s) lacks foundation... Thus, a few wrong etymologies have been debunked, but what the sly fox has to do with the foxglove remains a mystery... obvious etymologies are often wrong, that foxglove causes legitimate surprise, and that folk etymology is the result of speakers’ healthy rebellion against the impenetrability of the words we use (or the conventional, seemingly arbitrary nature of the sign, as linguists put it).