CONEFLOWER CRAZY
I am having a crisis. The plant breeders and nurserymen of this world are conspiring to drive me crazy and they have just about succeeded. Unlike all those medical and psychological conditions that you hear about on television–RLS, GERD, SAD–there is no pharmaceutical remedy for my problem. It doesn’t even have initials yet, but it’s making me tear my hair out in chunks. For convenience sake I am going to christen it ECS, for Echinacea Confusion Syndrome. You might also call it CI for Coneflower Insanity.
Back in the day–say, fifteen years ago–if you wanted a coneflower you bought Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower. It was the only choice available to most people and it was a good one. Purple coneflower is a tough, native perennial that grows about three feet tall. It’s a member of the Compositae or daisy family and the flowers look like big purple daisies with large, cone-shaped centers. Purple coneflower is easy to care for, doesn’t mind a bit of dryness and tends to self seed. It’s also a wonderful cut flower. It doesn’t smell like much, but butterflies love it and birds are drawn to those cone-shaped seed heads. In my opinion, any plant that attracts the gorgeous checkered fritillary butterfly and the colorful, perky goldfinch is pretty close to perfect.
That is why I am not a plant breeder.
Plant breeders look at something like the purple coneflower and ask themselves why it can’t be taller or shorter or more floriferous. They think about desirable characteristics and wonder if the plain old coneflower could smell better or bloom in an array of interesting colors and sprout double petals or variegated leaves.
These considerations keep breeders awake at night, leading them to do the kind of work that has given me ECS. Since there is no cure, I have to treat it with a homemade remedy that involves extended catalog thumbing, followed by long periods of calculator manipulation and large doses of retail therapy.
By my count, the major retail plant catalogs list over forty Echinacea species, hybrids and cultivars, not counting collections. To deal with this you can either limit yourself to one or two catalogs or figure out in advance what you want.
You can always order good old purple coneflower. But suppose you want something that looks like a souped-up version of the species, with bigger, more numerous flowers and upturned petals? Some of the best choices might be ‘Ruby Star’, which is sometimes offered under its original German name, Rubinstern, or its offspring, ‘Ruby Giant’. Other good picks include ‘Merlot’, ‘Fatal Attraction’, ‘Magnus’, ‘Prairie Splendor’ and ‘Primadonna’. To get the look of Echinacea purpurea, plus the shorter stature that works better for small spaces and containers, try: ‘Kim’s Knee High’, ‘Mars’, ‘Pixie Meadowbright’, ‘Liliput’ or ‘Elton Knight’.
All of the preceding varieties have the characteristic purple flowers of the species, though in some cases the purple may be tinged with rose. The only way to be sure is to read the catalog copy carefully or go to the garden center at the appropriate time and see plants in bloom.
For lovers of double-petaled, purple-rose varieties, retailers offer ‘Pink Double Delight’, ‘Razzmatazz’ and ‘Double Decker’. ‘All That Jazz’ is a purple coneflower with quilled or partially rolled petals.
White is always a good bet in the garden, and breeders have come up with some lovely white coneflowers including ‘White Swan,’ ‘Virgin’, ‘Kim’s Mophead’ and ‘Fragrant Angel’, which, as the name suggests, has a pleasant fragrance. ‘ Jade’ also has white flowers, but with greenish tips. Some of the white varieties have a slight greenish cast.
If you want coneflowers that are more green than white, try ‘Coconut Lime’, ‘Green Jewel’ or ‘Green Envy’, which features petals that start out green and end up mauve.
The biggest news in Echinacea breeding in the last few years has been about fragrant cultivars in unusual colors. The leading breeder in this category is Richard Saul of Itsaul Nursery in Georgia, who has done extensive hybridizing, especially with crosses between Echinacea purpurea and a yellow-flowered species, Echinacea paradoxa. Some of his new varieties, sold as the Big Skyâ„¢ Series, include: the yellow ‘Sunrise’, gold ‘Harvest Moon’, peach-toned ‘Summer Sky’ and the dwarf magenta ‘After Midnight’. Other unusually colored varieties include: the orange-russet ‘Tiki Torch’, from Oregon’s Terra Nova Nurseries, ‘Art’s Pride’, developed at the Chicago Botanic Garden and ‘Mango Meadowbright’, also from the Chicago program.
The list of available Echinacea goes on and on. Retail suppliers abound, though color selection can be a problem due to the limitations of color reproduction in catalogs and on the Internet. A few good sources that offer free print catalogs include: White Flower Farm, P.O. Box 50, Route 63, Litchfield, Connecticut 06759, (800) 503-9624, www.whiteflowerfarm.com; Wayside Gardens, 1 Garden Lane, Hodges, SC 29695, (800) 213-0379, www.waysidegardens.com; and Song Sparrow Perennial Farm, 13101 E. Rye Road, Avalon, Wisconsin 53505, (800) 553-3715, www.songsparrow.com.