Description

Key Information:

Soil: Mesic (Medium) – Xeric (Dry). Drought tolerant.
Sun: Full Sun – Part Sun
Height: 2-4 feet
Bloom Color: Pale lavender to pink
Bloom Season: June – July

More Details:

Suggested Uses: Pale Purple Coneflower showy coneflower grows happily on sandy, gravelly soils in sun or part shade. It is also a great option for heavy clay soils. The fresh or dried flowers add bold character to bouquets! This is a perennial with a very long life and deep root systems. You will find butterflies perched on the flowers, feeding on nectar. Deer resistant.

Native Range: Native to the Lower Midwest and scattered locations throughout the South and the Northeast. Minnesota is just north of its native range.

Pollinators/Habitat: Pale Purple Coneflowers are a high-value nectar source for adult monarch butterflies and a host plant for the silvery checkerspot butterfly. It is also attractive to bees, moths and many other beneficial insects. Also great for birds, including hummingbirds and goldfinches, which eat the seeds. They are favored by the federally endangered Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (Bombus affinis). Toxic to mosquitos and houseflies.

Flowers: Flowers are composite. Central disk flowers create a sharp, bristly cone in the middle surrounded by very slender ray flowers that curve downward. These flowers ripen and dry into a very spiky seed head. Seeds are ready to collect when the stem beneath the flower dries and turns brown.

Leaves: Leaves are basal, long, narrow and also quite rough to the touch.

Name: Echinacea is from the Greek word for hedgehog. It refers to the spiny center of the flower.

More information: USDA plant profile