Echinacea SunSeekers Orange - Purple Coneflower

Echinacea SunSeekers Orange is a compact cultivar with flamboyant orange flowers, featuring narrow and trailing petals around a prominent brown-orange centre. Slightly fragrant, it attracts many pollinators. It is an interesting variety due to its floribundity and its ability to thrive in flower beds and pots. Its flowers appear on the plant for several weeks in summer. It is an easy-to-grow perennial that blends well with other plants in the garden or on the terrace. Ideal for cutting or drying.

Echinacea SunSeekers Orange is a recent horticultural hybrid. This cultivar belongs to the remarkable SunSeekers series, which stands out from other echinaceas with their unique shapes and colours that do not fade over time. The SunSeekers also have exceptional vigour, producing masses of flowers on short stems above narrow dark green leaves. This Orange variety forms a dense and compact clump, reaching a height and width of 50 cm (20in). The plant exhibits excellent durability. The opposite lanceolate leaves are dark green and covered in rough hairs. The abundant flowering occurs from July to September and is loved by butterflies. The branched stems each end in a solitary head with a prominent, bristly central disc of deep orange-brown surrounded by narrow and trailing ligulate petals of flamboyant orange. The fruit is an achene that releases sought-after seeds for birds. This plant firmly and deeply anchors itself in the soil with its well-developed root system.

Echinacea SunSeekers Orange can be grown in pots or in open ground. This perennial can be placed in the borders of flower beds, mixed with other varieties of Echinaceas, or alongside Inulas, compact Tritomas, Achilleas, daisies, Echinops, Coreopsis... Lighten up the scene by mixing in some ornamental grasses such as Stipa tenuifolia. The beautiful colours of echinacea are also lovely in fresh or dried flower arrangements.

A medicinal plant: In homoeopathy, the root of echinacea is used to fight colds and strengthen the immune system. These properties were first used by Native Americans. The name Echinacea comes from the Greek echinos, which means "hedgehog-like" or "spiny," and acea, which means "having the shape of," referring to the appearance of the flower's centre.