Echinacea purpurea Espinosa Yellow - Purple Coneflower

Echinacea purpurea 'Espinosa Yellow' bears beautiful bright yellow flowers, with slightly drooping petals. This superb and tall variety of purple coneflower forms a large bouquet of prominent cone-shaped flowers, brown-orange, for almost 3 months. It blooms from the first year. The plant, with sturdy stems, maintains a neat upright appearance in beds while providing good flowers for fresh or dried bouquets. Purple Echinacea is also a very resistant plant that is easy to grow in the garden. Its lightly scented flowers are visited by butterflies, bees, and other pollinators.

Native to the Western United States, from Georgia to Michigan through Oklahoma and Ohio, Echinacea purpurea (or Rudbeckia purpurea) is a perennial with a strong character, which does not resemble anything known, but which confidently colonizes rocky meadows, savannahs, open woodlands, and roadside edges in its natural habitat. 'Espinosa Yellow' Echinacea is a horticultural selection. Once mature, it displays an erect bushy habit and measures from 80cm (32in) to 1m (3ft) in height and 50 to 60cm (20 to 24in) in width. This plant does not weaken or collapse, demonstrating very good resilience. The opposite, lanceolate, green leaves are covered in rough hairs. The flowering takes place from July to late September, accompanying that of Inulas, asters, and ornamental tobacco plants, and is highly visited by butterflies. The reddish, branched stems bear at the end of each branch an inflorescence in a large 12 to 15cm (5 to 6in) diameter head, with a prominent conical central disk composed of tiny brown-orange florets. The cone is surrounded by fairly thin, slightly drooping yellow ligules. The fruit is an achene releasing seeds that birds are fond of. This plant firmly and deeply anchors itself in the soil, thanks to its highly developed root system. Its above-ground vegetation, deciduous, dries up in autumn.

The 'Espinosa Yellow' Echinacea offers a long-lasting, brilliant and luminous flowering, pleasant to contemplate until the beginning of autumn. It will be planted in large borders and mixed flower beds with other flowers whose shapes contrast (ornamental tobacco plants, daylilies, columbines, phlox) or in the company of asters, yarrows, Leucanthemums. Lighten the scene by mixing in some ornamental grasses such as Stipa tenuifolia, Muhlenbergia capillaris... Splendid in flower beds, the beautiful color of the purple echinacea is also very attractive in fresh or dried flower bouquets.

The fragrance of Echinacea is not the same at every stage of flowering. Initially, when the florets are in an upright crown, the scent is barely noticeable. At full bloom, when the florets droop as if drained of their strength, it exhales a fine honey scent, very attractive to bees, butterflies, and other insects. As soon as the head is pollinated, the scent takes on a more vanilla note.

Virtues: In homeopathy, its root is used to fight against colds and to strengthen the immune system. These properties were already used by Native Americans. The name Echinacea comes from the Greek echinos, which means "hedgehog-like" or "like a hedgehog," and acea for "having the shape of," in reference to the flower heads. Purpurea means "purple".