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  • From: Doug Green <dgreen@kingston.net>
  • To: gardenwriters-on-gardening <gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [gwl-g] orange Echinacea
  • Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 08:51:12 -0400

At 02:08 PM 6/11/04, you wrote:
I'm growing the orange Echinacea the Chicago Botanic Garden gave us last year at the GWA symposium. It's just opened its first flower and I am very underwhelmed. The petals are quite narrow and at present the margins are recurved so as to make them almost tubular. Unfortunately, the underside of the petals is white-ish so there's not much of an orange show. Perhaps the petals will flatten out as the flower matures. Is anyone else growing this and if so, how's it doing for you?

Ellen Zachos

The Echinacea story is actually an interesting one if you happen to be a production nursery (I currently work for Heritage Perennials - www.perennials.com and we have them all as we have/had exclusive Canadian distribution rights. It reads more like a soap opera than anything else..

'Razzmatazz' the double pink is a gorgeous plant. Flowered for me last year and while I started with a runt, it quickly grew into a sizeable plant. Hardiness is not an issue - came through a late fall transplant in a USDA zone 4 garden. However, last year the grower in Holland managed to spray the crop with a growth regulant that wiped out the majority of the crop rather than kept it short. So, once again this year the available numbers are quite small.

'Orange Meadowbrite' is being produced by tissue culture. The data from that producer indicates that there is contamination in the culture. The first groupings of plants that came to production nurseries contained 20% of a yellow clone rather than the orange. We have some of that crop and yes, the stems indicate that 20% is yellow rather than orange. I believe the yellow will be named Yellow Mango or something like that (don't quote me on this as I'm working from memory here) The interesting part of this is that the yellow is dominant and later crops from the tc lab are now running 80% yellow and 20% orange. While I'll have both by summer's end, I haven't seen it flower yet. So, if you don't like the orange, you might have the yellow clone. If your stems have a reddish cast, you have the orange clone. If they are without the red accent and are green, you have the yellow.

'Frangrant Angel' - from Terra Nova - is indeed fragrant but I won't be digging up my roses in the near future.
'Doppelganger' (Double Decker) appears production trouble-free and is coming along. Flower is wierd but again - you gotta have one somewhere in the garden.
'Rocky Top Hybrids' are interesting and I'd keep one in the garden just to have it but the flower is smallish. It might bulk up once it has a few years in the ground.
'Prairie Frost' does have good white marking around the leaf edges but hasn't yet flowered for me.
'Sparkler' the flecked variegation looks like all those flecked variegated leaves - sick. But interesting nevertheless - not yet flowered.

It is interesting growing Echinacea in a production nursery. They do tend to have minds of their own and do not bulk up to create good saleable plants without some specific temperature regimes. Once established in the garden however, they have been fine for me.

I'll know more about these next year after they bulk up this summer and fall. Next year's flowering will tell the tale here. But, they're an interesting family of plants. Just be careful about writing about them to stimulate demand until you absolutely, positively know they're in the garden centers. We have some pretty frustrated gardeners and garden center owners out there that can't get their hands on these plants. <grin>

Doug
Doug Green
Award winning writer - making things happen
Telling Your Story - Your Way
www.simplegiftsfarm.com/clips/clipmaster.html







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