The mighty Echinacea
As we enter into this cold and flu season, even non-gardeners will recognize the name Echinacea. Walking through the natural medicine section of your area pharmacy, you’ll see tablets, capsules, tinctures and other remedies that include Echinacea as part of an herbal approach for treating the common cold.
There are nine species of Echinacea, all native to the Midwest and central areas of North America, with three of them commonly used for medicinal purposes: Echinacea angustifolia, E. pallida and E. purpurea. Indigenous peoples have used this plant as a cure-all for centuries; traditionally used to treat infections and wounds, it was also used in Europe to treat scarlet fever, syphilis, malaria, blood poisoning and diphtheria. While the 20th century saw the introduction of antibiotics, which made herbal remedies like Echinacea less appealing, natural medicine advocates in Germany have never lost their interest in its healing properties.
Throughout the course of history, plants have first been primarily recognized for their medicinal qualities: treating illness, wounds and physical conditions have been of much greater importance than creating beautiful gardens. But today, plant breeders have embraced Echinacea and made it one of the most tinkered with perennials on the market.
Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower is the primary species from which most modern-day cultivars have been derived. In its unadulterated form, its flower has light purple-pink rays with a coppery brown-domed prickly centre, hence its name from the Greek word echinos, or hedgehog.
Plant breeders began work on strengthening Echinacea’s somewhat dreary flower colour. Breeding attention was originally centred in Germany in the 1960s where cultivars of the plant were isolated if they showed promise. But the first real surge in Echinacea breeding took place in the 1980s and ’90s, mainly in terms of flower size, depth of purple colour, quantity and duration of bloom. The plant took centre stage in 2003 when the relatively showy Echinacea purpurea ‘Magnus’ was designated the Perennial Plant of the Year in the United States by the Perennial Plant Association. Incidentally, this was the same year that the first doubleflowered coneflower was available, love it or hate it, called ‘Razzamatazz.’
Echinacea was also one of the perennials embraced by the European plant movement, where gardens were designed to imitate the look of meadows. This style evolved in Holland and Germany, where other native North American plants had been enthusiastically adopted, including goldenrod, switch grass, bee balm and tickseed. A looser style of gardening where ornamental grasses began to take centre stage begged for perennials that were long blooming, easy to grow and complementary in form, not to mention unique to the European market.
In the mid 1990s, more adventurous inter-species breeding programs were underway in the United States and pastel coloured Echinacea were born. If you had purchased one of these exciting new coneflowers and were less than enthused about its performance in your garden (think ‘Art’s Pride,’ a surprisingly dud Chicago introduction), chances are it might have been one of those with a more southern mixed parentage, namely Echinacea tennesseensis x E. paradoxa. The former, known as the Tennessee coneflower, was chosen as the primary parent in the Georgia breeding program at Saul Nursery. The other cultivars were being bred and tested at the much chillier Chicago Botanic Garden using Echinacea purpurea instead as one of the parents hence, in part, their stronger constitution.
In the past 10 years, there have been dozens of new Echinacea cultivars introduced to the gardener. Some, like Echinacea ‘Doppelganger,’ have been crazy ugly and another, the new Echinacea ‘Cheyenne Spirit,’ blooms in a mix of flower colours that defies explanation and is pure happiness in a seed pack. The latter cultivar was named an All American Selections award winner for 2013 — miraculously, this cultivar can be grown true from seed and will produce blooms that first year if you sow it indoors before the end of January.
The truth is, if you have a sunny spot that doesn’t stay soggy in the spring, is slightly moist through the summer and can be seen from your patio or deck, then you must have coneflowers in your garden. But the choice can be staggering, so if I had my druthers, I would seek out some of the excellent cultivars (as well as ‘Cheyenne Spirit’) noted in the accompanying box here.