Sunrise Coneflower
Echinacea purpurea
(ek-in-AY-shee-uh) (pur-PUR-ee-uh)

Family: Asteraceae (ass-ter-AY-see-ee)

This picture was taken on Saturday out on Long Island. The North Fork is truly a gardeners paradise with everything from farm stands to huge wholesale and retail nurseries. Just about every house and business is landscaped, and everything seems to grow really well. Farming is still a little bit of a way of life out there. I took the ferry from Bridgeport to Port Jefferson and drove out to the nursery on Route 25. Of course I had to stop at a couple of other places along they way. One place had this huge block of Sunrise Coneflower blooming and it was just beautiful.

‘Sunrise’ is just another in the great new Coneflowers that seem to keep coming out. I guess most are a hybrid between Echinacea purpurea and Echinacea paradoxa. Richard Saul, at a nursery in Atlanta, has done a wonderful job hybridizing them. ‘Sunrise’ did well for me this year. It is about as tall as the regular Coneflowers and the stems are stout.