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Drive-By Echinacea

© Barbara M. Martin

Please note: Thank you for visiting my Cottage Garden topic and reading my columns, published here from February 1997 through spring 2003! This Cottage Garden column was written by Barbara M. Martin and is Copyrighted by Barbara M. Martin. It may not be altered or copied or published elsewhere in whole or in part without specific permission from the author. I regret I am no longer actively editing or contributing to this suite101.com topic as of mid-2003. Happy Gardening!

Have you seen it?

Maybe not a showstopper, but an eye-catcher nonetheless.

Plant identification at 60 plus miles an hour on a winding road through the Ozarks is always a treat, but when you are driving at the same time it can be a bit of a challenge.

What, I thought, is that? I squinted at a tall skinny plant leaning into the sunlight on a blind curve. A skimpy sort of coneflower. Prominent cone, stringy limp petals hanging down and curving inward, definitely purple but washed out and pale.

Bingo! Pallor is the key. Echinacea pallida right there in real life. Cousin to the E. purpurea garden variety purple coneflower. Known to herbalists forever. Native to North America. And striking in its own way, growing like a ghost on the edge of a limestone cliff.

I'd know it anywhere now that I've seen it, and so might you if you are a prairie wildflower plants fan or if you are into medicinal herbs.

Many of us know and grow its relative the purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) as a high performance, long-blooming and showy perennial valued not just for its beauty, but also for its amazing power to draw butterflies and its virtually unstoppable ability to laugh at extremes of heat and cold and drought.

Many of us have noticed myriad herbal remedies touting "echinacea" as a panacean ingredient, too. (E. angustifolia is another variety you may see listed on a label.) Some might almost consider echinacea to be a household word once again in this "new" age of natural remedies and herbal healing.

But how well do we know or standardize our ingredients? Do you know which of the coneflowers is the endangered species? And maybe most intriguing of all is to trace this plant's recorded history from Native American knowledge through today's modern commercial crop production practices and then we can only begin to guess at its future as science unravels the mysteries of nature.

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