Popular Purple Coneflower
The fifth in a series of gorgeous garden plants that are good for the environment! Let’s establish a pollinator garden full of beautiful native plants! (By request.)
I’m sure you have noticed Purple Coneflower growing along roadsides and in gardens. It’s very popular in the area — it is native, grows wild too, and blooms all summer long in fields and along roads. This makes for a low maintenance perennial garden plant. It’s even popular with pollinators and a widely used (although likely ineffective) medicine. No wonder humans love to cultivate it.
Identification and Description
There are actually nine species of Echinacea native to North America (NIH). This one is E. purpurea.
In a garden, it usually grows in stands, from six inches high to two feet. In the wild, it will show as small, discrete flowers scattered here and there. It doesn’t compete well with other fast growers, so it doesn’t produce dense stands without human help (USDA).
The stems are woody and hairy, and rough to the touch. They feel sturdy between your fingers and don’t fork. The leaves are shaped like eyes, have hairs, and are not very thick. The USDA describes them as “ovate to ovate-lanceolate with serrate edges” (USDA). I’m pretty sure that’s a very precise way of saying they are ovalish with points on the ends and that the edge of the leaf is slightly wavy. Um. I think. Still working on this formal botanical vocabulary.
I want to point out the new flower in the above picture. I always found it fascinating that, instead of budding and opening up, these flowers seem to grow more like a tree. The center forms and is small, and the petals start to grow out. The petals slowly get larger and longer and the center gets thicker and rounder until we suddenly have a mature flower. It’s pretty neat.
Medicinal Use
I am sure you have heard of Echinacea as a medicinal plant. When I was a kid, there was a fad for Echinacea everything. Tea, candies, pills, etc. Echinacea and St. John’s Wort. Well, unlike the native North American St. John’s Wort, this actually really is the famous medicinal plant.
There are nine species of Echinacea native to North America. All were used medicinally by Native American tribes, and today Echinacea purpurea is possibly the most commonly used in commercial preparations (NIH).
The most commonly used portion of the plant is the root. When farmed, typically the plant will be grown, dug up, split up into 3–5 parts with the roots drastically trimmed and harvested, and then replanted for a year or two to regrow. It requires watering and care to recover. When foraged, people commonly just dig up the plant. Sometimes people replant part of the flower, but it frequently dies. This causes problems… see below.
But in spite of it’s extensive use and marketing, studies have not shown that use while sick with the common cold reduces the length of the infection (NIH). And the common cold is the most widely used modern application! It also not infrequently causes allergic reactions, such as rash, or other reactions, like a stomachache (NIH). Bummer. Echinacea, my childhood self is disappointed in you! When I think of all those powdered plant capsules I choked down during the school year…. Those things were horse pills.
Echinacea in the Wild — Don’t Forage It!
Echinacea is loved by pollinators, but also by foragers. Unfortunately, it has been so heavily foraged for its roots that Echinacea purpurea is only rarely now found wild (USDA Plant Guide). Much of what is found today is in gardens.
Remember, Echinacea purpurea has proven unreliable in extensive medical trials. And it has an important role to play for pollinators, many of which are struggling! So, I would consider it unethical to harvest this plant from the wild. If you want to harvest it, grow it. It grows fine with very little effort in pots or in gardens, in full or part shade.
As a matter of fact, if you have the care and feeding of some sunny field, consider planting a native wildflower mix that includes Echinacea and then just leaving it to grow. Enjoy the harvest of bees, butterflies, moths, and skippers with your eyes!
Even in the winter, the flower keeps on giving. The spiky almost-black dried seed heads can provide food for songbirds as well as an interesting visual mixed with grass. Mow infrequently to allow wildflowers to grow without competition from shrubs and trees.
