Echinacea pallida  Pale Purple Coneflower Seed and Potted Plants
eck-in-AY-see-uh  PAL-ih-duh

Easyliving Native Perennial Wildflowers Native Wild Flower Plants and Seed
for Home Landscaping and Prairie Restorationjohn@easywildflowers.com

  click for additional photo   click on photo for larger images. Photos by cj

Echinacea pallida (Pale Purple Coneflower) potted plants
 $5.00 each plus boxing/shipping
please contact us by email with your zip code and number of plants for shipping charges on potted plants

For other native wildflowers visit the  Wildflower Seed and Potted Plant Price List 
 to order copy and mail the order form
 or 
email questions, comments, and orders to  john@easywildflowers.com 

There is a $10 minimum on seed orders, this can be a combination of different seeds.
Echinacea pallida, Pale-Purple Coneflower, as a member of the Echinacea family, is well known for its medicinal use in boosting the immune system. Pale Purple Coneflower with it's tall slender stems topped with large daisy-like flowers with drooping purple-pink petals makes it an excellent flower for the cutting garden. Wild Pale Purple Coneflower nectar is enjoyed by butterflies and its seeds are a favorite food source for small birds such as goldfinches and chickadees.  Wild Echinacea pallida plants are useful drought-resistant native perennial wildflowers that thrive in full hot sun and average to humus-rich soil. Plant in a rock garden, butterfly garden, or naturalize in a prairie meadow.

Echinacea pallida seed germination is improved after a pretreatment of 6 to 8 weeks of cold moist stratification or when planted outside in the fall or early winter.

Pale Purple Coneflower is a multipurpose wild flower occurring naturally on dry glades, prairies, savannas, and roadsides from Illinois and Michigan, to Minnesota, and Nebraska, south to Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas.  Asteraceae (Aster Family)

Uses

Pale purple coneflower can be used for roadside plantings, prairie restoration, wildlife food and cover, prairie landscaping and native gardens.

 Description

Pale purple coneflower is a native perennial forb growing to a height of 3 feet with coarse bristly hairs on the stout stems and leaves.  The leaves are rough-surfaced, up to 10 inches long and 1 ½ inches wide, and tapering at either end, with several parallel veins running along their lengths.  The basal leaves are on long stalks, while the stem leaves are few, and usually lack long stalks.  There is a single showy flower head at the top of each stem, with many drooping, pale purple petal-like ray flowers, each up to 3 ½ inches long, surrounding a broad, purplish brown, cone-shaped central disk.  Pale purple coneflower flowers in late spring to midsummer.

 Adaptation and Distribution

Pale purple coneflower is widely distributed in dry and mesic prairies and open savannas from southeastern Nebraska and north central Iowa south and east to southwestern Arkansas and northwestern Indiana.

 Establishment

Prepare a clean weed free seedbed by disking and harrowing or using chemical weed control.  Firm the seedbed by cultipacking.  Seedbed should be firm enough to allow seed to be planted 1/8 inch deep.  The seed of pale purple coneflower should be dormant seeded for best results, because the seed needs cold moist stratification for two months (60 days) in cold, moist environment (35 - 40 degrees Fahrenheit).  This is the usual time required to break dormancy; however, a few require only one month or up to three months.

 Pale purple coneflower has 80,000 – 85,000 seeds per pound.  Seeding rates for seed production should be about 3 - 5 pounds of pure live seed (PLS) per acre in 36-inch rows

(20 - 30 seeds per row foot).  For a solid stand, the seeding rate would be 15 - 20 pounds PLS per acre (30 – 40 seeds per square foot).

 For a prairie planting, pale purple coneflower would be a small component of a mixture ranging from 0.1 – 1.0 PLS pound per acre (0.2 – 2 PLS per square foot).

 Use no fertilizer the establishment year unless soil test indicates a low deficiency of less than 15 PPM of phosphorus and or less than 90 PPM of potassium.  Use no nitrogen during the establishment year as this can encourage weed competition.

 Management

Reduce weed competition by mowing over the height of the pale purple coneflower plants or cultivating between the rows.  For grassy weed control usage of a post emergence grass herbicide can provide control and will encourage a good stand.  Remove dead plant material in the spring for faster green-up by shredding.  Burning of dead plant refuge can weaken the plants unless done before it has broken dormancy.

The map below shows areas where Echinacea pallida Pale Purple coneflower wildflower plants grow wild but it can be planted and will grow over a much wider area than shown.  USDA plant hardiness zones 3 to 9. 

map only shows natural distribution. plants are hardy over a much larger area 

please contact us by email for shipping charges on Pale-purple coneflower potted plants

Use the chart below for shipping charges on pale purple coneflower seeds
to order copy and mail the order form
or
 email questions, comments and orders to john@easywildflowers.com

There is a $10 minimum on seed orders, this can be a combination of different seeds
  

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Easyliving Wildflowers
PO Box  522
Willow Springs,  MO.  65793
USA
Phone 417-469-2611 

We accept payment by check or money order and through PayPal

e-mail questions, comments, and orders to  john@easywildflowers.com

Echinacea pallida, Pale-purple coneflower plant distribution map complements of USDA, NRCS. 2001. The PLANTS Database, Version 3.1
  (http://plants.usda.gov). National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA.