E for Echinacea

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Enter E

E for Echinacea - coneflowers

In doing a little research on-line, I found nine varieties of Echinacea. However, I'm going to spotlight two varieties that are most common here in the central midwest prairies.

The information on these two varieties of Echinacea comes from Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers, a Field Guide - text by Doug Ladd and Photos by Frank Oberle and others, published by Falcon Publishing, Inc., Helena, Montana.

Echinacea pallida
is commonly called the Pale Purple Coneflower.

This photo was taken from Google Images

The plants grow to 3' tall, with coarse, bristly hairs on stout stems and leaves. The basal leaves are rough-surfaced, upt to 10" long and 1 1/2" wide, and tapering at either end, with several parallel veins running along their lengths. The basal leaves grow on long stalks while the stem leaves are few. There is a single showy flower head on each stem, with many drooping, pale purple petal-like ray flowers, each up to 3 1/2" long, surrounding a broad purplish brown, cone-shaped central disk. Bloom time is late spring to midsummer.

These plants are widely distributed in dry and mesic prairies and open savannas from southeastern Nebraska and north-central Iowa south and east to southwestern Arkansas and northwestern Indiana. It is rare further east.

Echinacea purpurea
is commonly called Purple Coneflower.

(This photo was taken in Mr. Shady's prairie plot last summer.)

Echinacea purpurea plants grow to 5' tall with much-branced stems. Plants in exposed sites hare fewer-branched and shorter. The rough leaves are coarsely toothed, alternate, mostly stalked, up to 8" long and 5" wide, and wider near the base. Flower heads are on individual stalks with each head 2 1/2 - 5" wide and consisting of up to 20 purple petal-like ray flowers surrounding a cone-shaped head of disk flowers. Bloom time is late spring through fall.

These plants are found occasionally in prairies and open woodlands, usually in moister sites than Pale Purple Coneflower; scattered through the tallgrass region west to southeastern Kansas.

This plant is a popular ornamental and many poulations are escapes from cultivation.

The next few photos were also taken in Mr. Shady's prairie plot.

Happy plants!

Getting a little closer...

Wow!

Echinacea purpurea,
Purple Coneflowers in my shady gardens....

Surrounded by deciduous trees, all our plants enjoy wonderfully sunny growth in the Spring. However, once the leaves grow on our oak and hickory trees, some pretty dense shade is created in many areas of our yard!

Consequently, the flowers struggle a bit. They often are very, very pale at their onset.

A bit droopier than their prairie counterparts,
but check out the leaves...

Yep! Echinacea purperea.

Perhaps their growing conditions aren't ideal,
but they continue to be very striking!

Don't you agree?

Shady, yes. But not tooo....