Echinacea purpurea Vintage Wine - Purple Coneflower

In bloom all summer long, Echinacea purpurea 'Vintage Wine' is a particularly hardy variety. It amazes with its rose-purple heads, whose ligulate petals are quite short and hollowed around a huge, bright orange and brown cone. This flower is fabulous in bouquets, very lively in borders and adapts well to growing in large pots. It is also a very resistant plant, close to the species, which adapts to difficult conditions, occasionally tolerating intense heat, humidity and drought. It can even grow in poor soils.

Originally from the western United States, Echinacea purpurea is a perennial with a strong character, which does not resemble anything known, but which confidently colonizes rocky meadows, savannahs, clear undergrowth and roadside edges in its natural environment. 'Vintage Wine' is a darker form of this formidable pioneer. It has a dense tufted habit, reaching 70cm (28in) in height and 40cm (16in) in width. This plant shows very good durability. The green leaves are covered in rough hairs. The fragrant flowering occurs from July to the end of summer and is highly visited by butterflies. The reddish-green, branched stems are topped with a solitary inflorescence in a large head, measuring 6cm (2in) in diameter, with a fairly flat disc, like a pompom of tiny florets, bright orange with a smaller, darker centre, and with dark pink to raspberry, narrow and hollowed ligules, horizontally oriented. The fruit is an achene that releases seeds that birds enjoy. This plant firmly and deeply anchors itself in the soil, thanks to its highly developed root system.

The 'Vintage Wine' purple Echinacea offers very colourful flowering, pleasant to witness on slightly misty autumn days. It is used in mixed borders with other pink flowers whose forms it contrasts well with (shrubby salvias, dwarf gladioli, daylilies, carnations) or in the company of inulas, asters, yarrows, daisies, echinops, phloxes and you can lighten the scene by mixing in some ornamental grasses such as Stipa tenuifolia, Muhlenbergia capillaris...Splendid in borders, the beautiful colour of the purple 'Vintage Wine' echinacea is also stunning in fresh or dried flower bouquets.