Echinacea purpurea
Purple coneflower, purple echinacea: its name comes from the Greek echinos, meaning hedgehog, referring to its raised, prickly central cone, which remains upright long after the petals have fallen. Native to the prairies of North America, it has retained the exceptional hardiness of its origins.
Characteristics:
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Hardy perennial: remarkably resistant to cold and disease, it requires very little care once established.
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Extended summer flowering: large pink-purple daisy-like flowers with drooping petals surrounding a raised orange cone.
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Winter structure: its dry cones persist throughout the winter, creating attractive frosted silhouettes.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: sunny; it tolerates light partial shade but flowers less abundantly.
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Soil: ordinary, deep, and above all well drained, even stony or slightly alkaline. Important note: it copes very poorly with heavy, waterlogged soils in winter, where its crown rots — this is the main cause of failure. In clay soil, plant it on a slight mound.
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Method: the seeds require 4 to 6 weeks of cold stratification to germinate properly. Then sow in spring, directly in the ground or in pots, barely covering the seeds.
Care advice:
- Water only during the first year, while it becomes established. After that, it takes care of itself.
- Do not cut the stems back in autumn: leave the dry cones standing for wildlife and winter structure, and prune in late winter.
Beneficial combinations:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- It is one of the best butterfly plants for the garden: its broad, flat cone provides an ideal landing platform, and bees, bumblebees, and hoverflies flock to it all summer.
- Its cones, left in place over winter, feed goldfinches and tits, which come to collect the seeds — one more reason not to prune too early.
Uses:
- A plant traditionally used by the peoples of the North American plains, it remains one of the most widely cultivated medicinal plants in the world today. See our medicinal plants to sow.
- An excellent cut flower with a long vase life.
Harvesting your own seeds:
Leave the cones to turn brown and dry completely on the plant, then crumble them over a container while wearing gloves: the scales are prickly. Separate the seeds from the debris. See storing your seeds.
Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
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