Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is a popular and iconic native and a mainstay of my plant palette for the garden. It’s one of the first native plants I began to incorporate into my own gardens and remains an all-time favorite to this day.
This Illinois native plant performs well in the garden, offers a long bloom season, and is attractive to a wide range of pollinators. The coarse texture of its leaves and chunky flowers contrasts nicely with more finely textured native grasses, adding ornamental beauty to its list of accolades.
Newer Echinacea
The genus Echinacea is native to North America, with a total of nine species, three of which are native to Illinois: purple coneflower (E. purpurea), pale purple coneflower (E. pallida), and glade coneflower (E. simulata). Visit any garden center, and you can typically find an eye-catching array of cultivars and hybrids. Some of these plants dependably reproduce from seed, but others require tissue culture to carry on the traits sought. While there are quite a few hybrids among Echinacea species, many trace their roots to purple coneflower.
The list of new echinacea offerings over the last 30 years is truly mindboggling, presenting all shapes and sizes of what we traditionally think of as a coneflower. In all cases, these new introductions were developed for some kind of improvement in the plant form, typically for ornamental reasons. However, many gardeners report poor performance in the garden after planting, leaving me to constantly question these newer coneflowers.
Changes to Flowers
Changes or “improvements” to flower color and form have been something very common among new coneflowers, and I think most gardeners can picture the stark, sometimes unreal-looking colors of echinacea flowers at the garden center. However, some of these changes may not benefit pollinators, creating a more ornamental bloom at the expense of pollen and nectar production.
Coneflowers fall into the Aster Family, known for its attractive composite flower structures that are often pollinator favorites. Each coneflower is comprised of hundreds of individual ray and disc flowers to create its spiny, composite inflorescence. The spiny appearance is created from pointed, bristly bracts that accompany each disc flower. It's these disc florets that offer pollen and nectar for pollinating insects. The colorful “petals’ we see are actually modified ray flowers designed to attract pollinator attention but offering no nectar or pollen reward.
Double-flowered coneflowers have become popular for their more showy flowers. However, the ornamentally attractive flowers were developed through breeding to promote genetic mutations that result in more petal-bearing ray flowers at the expense of the pollen and nectar-producing disc flowers, making them much less valuable to pollinators.
Other changes to flowers have included an extended bloom season or more abundant or larger flowers. Some newer coneflowers offer more reflexed petals (bending downward) vs more horizontal petals to create a new look.
Changes to Habit
Breeding and development have also focused on improving habitat. Echinacea species evolved to compete in nature, tolerating poor soils and plant competition that may not exist in our garden space. When grown in the garden with some of these natural pressures removed, coneflowers are sometimes prone to flopping over from excessive growth. Breeding for shorter or sturdier stems has helped with this issue, with some cultivars even exhibiting a compact or miniature stature.
Some cultivars or hybrids also offer a more branching habit that leads to a greater number of blooms. New varieties also offer a more uniform growth habit to produce stems and flowers at similar heights, versus the tendency many coneflowers have for irregular height among stems and blooms. This combined effect of abundant flowers and more uniform growth often creates a more dramatic visual effect as a whole.
Which Echinacea Should I Choose?
The jury is still out on which new coneflower is the best. However, the Mt. Cuba Center has published two research reports over recent decades documenting the performance of Echinacea hybrids and cultivars. Their more recent trial, published in 2020, also took into account pollinator preferences, along with plant performance. Findings indicate the straight species of purple coneflower as the second most attractive plant, losing out only to the white-flowered cultivar ‘Fragrant Angel’. This conclusion has led me to vote with the pollinators and stick to the straight species for that iconic coneflower look in my gardens.
To read more, both reports mentioned above are available on the Mt Cuba Center website at: www.mtcubacenter.org.
