Home, home on the range

Echinacea purpurea is the familiar coneflower, and I have many, a whole flowerbed of them. Echinacea is from the Greek echinos meaning hedgehog or sea-urchin, referring to the spiny cone, while purpurea is Latin for purple-red, the familiar colour.

Mixed in the flowerbed are a few other colours from a pack of seeds called 'Cheyenne Spirit' that were said to reflect the colours of the western plains. Some were yellow, others orange, and even red, but over the years, a number of these hybrids have reverted to the standard colour. Regardless, the bed in summer is always full of bees, butterflies, and random nectar slurpers, and in fall, goldfinches dart in to ransack the seed heads.

Echinacea purpurea is considered by some sources to be native to Ontario. Others call it a near native because it is a plant of the Northeastern US, but then plants don’t respect borders, so call it native if you like.

There is another species of echinacea that is thoroughly native. Echinacea pallida, with the common name of pale purple coneflower, and it is certainly paler than the other. It grows wild from as far south as Texas and up through Ontario. It’s a prairie plant and prairies in the province aren’t what they used to be. A mix of grasses, herbaceous plants and shrubs rather than trees, prairie landscapes were once widespread in the far southwest of Ontario, primarily around Essex and Kent counties.

There are still small areas scattered about, including part of High Park in Toronto, but they’re now rare in Ontario. The loss of prairie habitat has meant a loss of the flora and fauna that were associated with them. My garden hardly resembles a prairie but my pale purple coneflower is happy to live there.

At first sight, someone might think pallida is simply an odd looking echinacea because it looks a little different from other coneflowers. It has the same spiny cone, and the flowers are borne on rigid stems to as much as a metre high, but the petals, rather than closely linked and splayed out and down, are narrow and clearly separated. They droop, almost vertically, giving them a carefree look. And I must confess, they are a slightly paler purple than the old standards. The leaves are different, too, narrower without toothed edges, and a darker green.

It isn’t bright and colourful like the many hybrids. Some that were developed were over the top, literally, with double decker flower heads, or less prominent cones. I tried those novelties years ago but they didn’t last. I think pallida has a more graceful look about it, so I’m growing it where its subtle features and colour can be appreciated.

Like Echinacea purpurea, pallida will readily self-seed, and left to proliferate could fill a garden, and then maybe small prairies could be restored in urban settings. I’m not sure my mixed flowerbed of coneflowers qualifies as a mini prairie, but it is doing its best.