Nonconformist coneflowers

By Ginny Smith

http://www.philly.com/

Echinacea, the garden's tough cookie, dons new duds, in a rainbow of colors and surprising shapes.

Evelyn Lovitz has waves of coneflower in her Cape May garden, mostly pink, purple and white, traditional colors for this popular North American wildflower.

Read more:

Purple coneflower ... not just a pretty flower

Echinacea purpure (Eastern purple coneflower) is a flower recognizable by its purple cone-shaped flowers. It is native to eastern North America and grows in the wild in much of the eastern, southeastern and midwest United States. Most people know this wildflower as the purple coneflower. Read more:
Purple coneflower ... not just a pretty flower Source: examiner.com

lhc sent this using ShareThis.

Video - Flower Gardens : How to Grow Purple Coneflower (Echinacea Purpurea)

The purple coneflower, or echinacea purpurea, is a plant that is closely related to the black-eyed Susan. Find out why purple coneflowers are hardy in nature with help from a sustainable gardener in this free video on flower gardening and plant care.

P Allen Smith Video: Purple Coneflower

Echinacea video from P Allen Smith
"Summer brings a wide variety of blooms to my garden. Some are exotic and come from far away places and others, like the purple coneflower, are as American as apple pie."

Video: Landscaping : Echinacea Flowers

Learn tips and tricks for planting, growing, caring for and harvesting the echinacea flower. See thousands of videos from hundreds of Experts, and link to us directly at www.expertvillage.com

Pictures of Echinacea

See pictures of Echinacea from Google Images:

Plant of the Day - Echinacea (Coneflower)

Echinacea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Asterids
Order: Asterales
Family: Asteraceae
Tribe: Heliantheae
Genus: Echinacea
Species: See text

Echinacea is a genus of nine species of herbaceous plants in the family Asteraceae commonly called Coneflower. All are strictly native to eastern and central North America. The plants have large, showy heads of composite flowers, blooming from early to late summer.

The genus name is from the Greek echino, meaning "spiny," due to the spiny central disk. They are herbaceous, drought-tolerant perennial plants growing to 1 or 2 m in height. The leaves are lanceolate to elliptic, 10 – 20 cm long and 1.5 – 10 cm broad. Like all asteraceae, the flowers are a composite inflorescence, with purple (rarely yellow or white) florets arranged in a prominent, somewhat cone-shaped head — "cone-shaped" because the petals of the outer ray florets tend to point downward (are reflexed) once the flower head opens, thus forming a cone.

Read more from Wikipedia:

Gardening: Beautiful flowers show on hottest days

www.muskogeephoenix.com
By Molly Day

Coneflowers are showing up everywhere, blooming in open fields, roadways and flowerbeds.

Their humble origins aside, there are now dozens of colors to choose from. And, all have the same preference for making their best flower display on hot, dry summer days.

There is some confusion about Echinaceas among gardeners because sometimes Black Eyed Susans are called Coneflowers. The brown centered orange-yellow wild flower is actually a Rudbeckia not an Echinacea.

Both are members of the perennial Aster family that includes chrysanthemums, sunflowers and Asters. The botanical name Echinacea is from the Greek word echinos meaning hedgehog, referring to the appearance of the center cone.

Large stands of echinacea used to be common across the central and eastern parts of North America (http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=ECPU ).

Read more: