Purple Cone Flower - Echinacea purpurea http://www.durgan.org/URL/?HERXF 14 August 2009 Purple Cone Flower - Echinacea purpurea The clump gets larger every year. The flowers last for several weeks.
Lovely Durgan, Will they set seed? I saw some beauties the other day on-line. http://www.soonerplantfarm.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=plants.main&alphaKey=E&whichName=genus&showIntro=0&typeID=
yes, kat, they set seed - i usually collect some and leave some for the birds that stay here over winter.
Thanks Joclyn, Now you all wet my appetite over seed saving I am going to buy some of them plants. The hot color range to tempt hummers..lmaoooooooooo
Most of those vividly colored echinaceas shown on the Sooner site are hybrids, usually involving the species E. purpurea and E. paradoxa (a North American prairie native with yellow flowers) and sometimes, I believe, E. tennesseensis. These species are rather similar, but you can often recognize the paradoxa parentage by the long, lance-shaped basal leaves from which tall flower stalks arise which have only a few insignificant leaves. The wild type purpurea is usually a more bushy plant with wider leaves opening farther up the stalks. Because of the mixed genetic makeup of these hybrids -- and the fact some of the newer varieties in commerce seem to have been chosen for their visual outrageousness -- I would guess it's unlikely that seedlings would closely resemble the parent plant. They might look like anything. As a side note, the echinacea used most commonly as a medicinal herb is yet another prairie species, E. angustifolia -- though I've read (just to further confuse things) that a closely similar plant, E. pallida, is sometimes erroneously harvested in its place, especially when plants are gathered from the wild. None of these grow well for me, so it's really a wonder I cannot resist them.
