Sunday, August 23, 2009

Today's Flowers: Three Different Coneflowers


Eastern Purple Coneflower
Echinacea purpurea cvs.
(ek-in-AY-shee-a) (pur-PUR-ee-uh)


It wouldn’t be summer around here if there wasn’t a lot of Coneflowers being posted on this blog. I ‘discovered’ a few more varieties yesterday while looking at some plants for an upcoming job. The introductions are making it to the nurseries in what seems like waves. Watching the evolution of the Coneflower has been fascinating with a range of emotions from “wow, that flower is drop dead gorgeous”, to “what was that person thinking”. Today’s Cones are:

‘Green Jewel’
‘Pink Poodle’
‘Mac and Cheese’

‘Green Jewel’ is a pretty Coneflower that doesn’t get too tall (24 inches). The green cones are nice but personally I prefer the yellow/orange ones. This flower is less green and doesn’t have the unusual petals of ‘Green Envy’ so it is a little less of a novelty. Overall it seems like it would fit in the garden fairly easily.

‘Pink Poodle’ is a different story. While the color is nice the flowers are too inconsistent looking for me. I think the emerging flowers are the nicest looking. This probably a “what was that person thinking” type of introduction.



‘Mac and Cheese’ is the best yellow Coneflower I have seen yet. ‘Harvest Moon’ (another yellow) is great although it does seem to have some problems returning each year. ‘Mac and Cheese’ is a much darker yellow and it looked like it was growing on a sturdy plant.


For more flower pictures from around the world check out:
Today’s Flowers . The links open at 1400 GMT.

11 comments:

i beati said...

I had been wondering about this very subject

Marju said...

Wonderful pictures, thank you for sharing!

Tammie Lee said...

your flower portraits are beautiful. Thank you for confirming the peony~
Spirithelpers

the Baitlady said...

Beautiful blooms!

VALKYRIEN said...

Beautiful photos of those lovely flowers! And great info!

DeniseinVA said...

Wonderful collection of flowers. I was very interested in the different color of coneflower. Never seen one of those before. Thank you for sharing and have a great week.

Les said...

I have foresaken all Echinacea cultivars. I have had my heart broken too many times with the new colors, shapes and habits. The species does so well for me, that it is all I will ever grow.

SandyCarlson said...

These are gorgeous. And they show me how today might have turned out...in Vermont.

Gunilla said...

Beautiful flowers. And thank you for all that information .

Gunilla in Sweden

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said...

I completely agree with you on 'Mac and Cheese' being the best so far of the yellows. I really like 'Sundown' for the orangey pinks, though... I think that would be the only one I'd get, if I branched out from white.

Thanks for showing the other ones, though. It's so nice to see great photos from real people's gardens instead of just the marketing stock photos we get from the vendors.