He is credited with introducing these flowers to Britain, sending the first American Purple coneflower seeds in the mid-1680’s. John Bannister (1650-1692), English Anglican reverend and a university-trained naturalist, in 1679 settled in Virginia, from where he sent new world plant discoveries back to the Bishop of London to be grown in the Oxford Botanic Garden (established in 1621).
One-hundred years before Mount Auburn’s visionary founder, physician/botanist, Jacob Bigelow (1787-1879) was born European naturalists/plant explorers were enthusiastically collecting new world plant treasures in situ to send back to European scientists and garden lovers. Butterflies, bees and other insects are reliable, repeated pollinators of these flowers. When the stamens are mature, its bright orange pollen adds a colorful luster. These hermaphroditic florets include both male and female (stamen and pistil) structures. The central cone-shaped heads are comprised of many individual flowers (florets) arranged in a spiral formation. These colorful ray petals, up to two-inches long, are sterile and may persist for two months. Purple coneflowers upon close observation have raised, cone-shaped, bronzy-brown to orange centers, surrounded by attractive, flat, purplish (sometimes white) petals which will transition from being held horizontal to an eventual drooping aspect. Contrastingly this genus is within the family ASTERACEAE, also called the COMPOSITAE, one of the largest families of flowering plants worldwide, with at least 1,335 genera and over 23,000 species. All these species are native to North America.
These eye-catching beauties are within a small genus of fewer than ten species. Striking as well in meadows, moist prairies and edges of low woods of the eastern United States. Its six-inch-across, daisy-like, rose-purple flowers are unmistakable in the summer gardens. This tall, perennial, native wildflower exudes visual gayety, which persists over an extended period of bloom. If we tasked the populace to compile a list of “cheerful” flowers, one could imagine Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea surviving the final cut.
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