I’m looking at a small pile of seeds, and for a moment it’s summer. I’m picturing Pale Purple Coneflowers, with long, pink petals draped like a dancer’s gown.
Echinacea pallida is an icon of the native prairie. Sensuous pink flowers stand out against the greens and yellows of the grassland.
They’re beautiful. Also, they sustain native bees, butterflies and birds.
Each stiffly upright stem has one daisy-type flowerhead at the top. When a blossom first opens, the petals are wire-thin. Over a few days, they widen, and their color deepens. The petals droop, but this is not wilting. It is the character of the flower and what makes it instantly recognizable.
Those waving pink petals are beacons to pollen-and-nectar-seeking insects. However, what the insects are going for is not in the petals themselves but in central brownish dome.
That’s where they probe for nectar. Every little point on the dome has a floret, a miniature complete flower, containing a tiny portion of nectar. Dipping into one floret after another, the bee or butterfly pollinates them.
In the past, before the prairie was broken by plow and road, when grasses stretched for hundreds of miles, coneflowers were abundant. Now they live in small patches, in scarce prairie remnants, and their numbers are diminishing.
However, Pale Purple Coneflowers are splendid in a garden. They’re easy to grow and require no coddling. Once established they don’t even need watering. They die back in winter, only to come up stronger the next spring. A boon to bees and butterflies, they are carefree, year after year.
These seeds in my hand need to be planted soon. It’s already late January, and they need time to get ready to sprout. Three months of cold stratification. They need to be cold and damp that long in order to germinate.
I can’t plant the seeds in frozen ground. So I put them in a little pot in sterile seed-starting mix, water them, close them up in a plastic bag and refrigerate.
Next April, I’ll take the container out of the fridge and wait for the plants to come up. I’ll grow them under lights in my dining room until all danger of frost is past. I’ll then move them outdoors to a growing box where they’re protected from chipmunks. When they’ve become sturdy little plants in late spring I’ll plant them out in a field where I can see them from my living room window.
Or sometimes, I skip all this and just order sturdy started plants from Prairie Moon Nursery.
Soon, pollinators will visit the Pale Purple Coneflower for nectar. American Goldfinches will come for the seeds.
Planting Pale Purple Coneflowers is my thanks, my homage to life on this miraculous planet.
I used to take the existence of the purple coneflower for granted. Thank you for helping me appreciate all the necessary steps it needs to offer us its beauty!
I will now be seeing Pale Purple Coneflowers as ballet dancers! Thank you for giving me this new vision of them. It makes me more eager to find a place for them in the yard. And thank you for the details of how to get the seeds started. Will love having ballerinas providing nourishment to the birds, bees and butterflies!