Echinacea Purpurea - Purple Coneflower - How to grow Echinacea

Echinacea purpurea or Purple Coneflower is an American native (east of the Mississippi from Canada to Texas) is a wonderful mid-to late summer bloomer. Ours are still blooming in November, and if it doesn’t freeze hard, will provide a few flowers for the Thanksgiving table. Echinacea is a member of the Daisy family, Asteraceae. The genus name comes from the Greek word echino, for ‘spiny,’ referring to the central disk, which looks like an over-loaded pincushion. Coneflowers prefer full sun, but are able to thrive in even poor soils. In fact the richer the soil, the more they tend to out-grow their balance. Removing spent blossoms during the summer will help in avoiding the reversion to type that hybrids tend to do, and will also keep the flowers coming well into the fall. I will plant a smaller perennial in front of the Coneflower to hide the lower leaves and give the area balance. Purple Coneflower is a perennial forb, which means it dies back to the ground every winter, and then sends up stems, leaves and flowers the next year. It is pretty long lasting, and in fact will colonize quite readily, growing in girth from a single little plant to a nice stand within a year or two. It grows to about two or two-and-a-half feet tall, and flowers from mid-summer to past the first frost, if you deadhead the flowers. The flower colors were originally purple, with some white variants. Now the plant breeders have come up with some exciting new cultivars and hybrids that range in the warmer sunset colors, to white and deep purple. Larger flowers are noticeable on some varieties, as well as shorter stems, keeping them in the one to one-and-a-half foot range. If you have a perennial garden and don’t have Echinacea, you should amend that situation in the spring. The various types can be purchased at local nurseries, by mail order and even in the big-box stores, Providence forbid. The flowers are like pincushions with tutus.One can easily see the ‘spiny’ nature of the central flower. Butterflies and goldfinches love the flowers and seeds respectively, and this American native is an important herbal plant as well. Indestructible and ornamental, good for you and the wildlife. What’s not to like? If you ask an herbalist, you will get quite a treatise on the healing powers of Echinacea. It is purported to be an immunostimulator, good for the common cold, and recommended for anthrax, snakebite and for the relief of pain. Part of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of the Original Peoples, who used it for symptoms that would ascribe to the common cold: cough, sore throat, headaches, etc. The Europeans took up the charge and made an industry of production of herbal supplements of Echinacea. However there are studies that suggest that it may not be as effective as some would have us think. And just to muddy the waters, there are other studies that incline one to believe that it is a modern-day miracle, or rather an old miracle cure come back to life. I leave the efficacy question for others to argue, but remind you all that any information included in this little newsletter be taken with a grain of salt, about as big as a Euclid MT-5500. I highly recommend that you consult your alternative medicine practitioner, be it herbalist, holistic medicine or witchdoctor before trying any of the herbs or nostrums that I write about.