Coneflower Wisdom from Mount Cuba
As I was flailing around for a topic for this week’s article, I came upon a trove of photos of Echinacea (Coneflowers) that I took at the Mount Cuba Center in Delaware on July 17, 2008. Mount Cuba, originally a DuPont estate, is dedicated to the study of native plants and promotion of native plants in the landscape and is open to the public. In addition to superb gardens, they also have trial evaluation plantings, where they select a genus of plants; e.g., Amsonia, Phlox for Sun, and Echinacea, plant out various commercially available selections, and evaluate their performance over several years. The evaluations are put into brochure form, and are available on their website.
Their conditions are similar to the D.C. area, and their recommendations should be helpful to you when you are presented with multiple choices at the garden center.
At the Echinacea evaluation in the photo, there were around 45 cultivars, if memory serves. At that time, the hybrids with exotic colors of orange and yellow and sometimes double flowers had just recently been introduced to the trade, and what I was seeing was that they were floppy and not as garden-worthy as the traditional pink/purple and white forms. Also, among the many pink forms, several stood out from the rest. Remembering that this was 17 years ago, I particularly liked ‘Pica Bella’, ‘Merlot’ and ‘Fatal Attraction’. In the whites it was ‘Fragrant Angel’. You can look at the Echinacea report online, which is a more recent evaluation with newer selections. ‘Pica Bella’ and ‘Fragrant Angel’ are still in the top selections even after all these years.
In the hort biz, “New” sells but “tried and tested” might result in better choices for your garden.
Interesting Mt Cuba is accepting of cultivars …. Some people into natives will say not to use cultivars . They are not good for pollinators etc. I am not against cultivars but wonder if they do benefit pollinators like the true native does.
An excellent question, and I suggest you pursue that with Mount Cuba!
My understanding is that in many cases the nativar is not as good for the pollinators/feeders as the wild seed strains. I have not done my homework on this so I can’t give you a more detailed answer–but I think it’s partly a function of what makes the nativar “better” from a purely esthetic viewpoint. So, I would think that a selection that is shorter than the species would be less of a problem, if any, than promoting a double-flowered version vs a standard-flowered version. (Like with the coneflowers, or Hydrangea ‘Annabelle, or roses.) Because I believe that the double-flowered type has less or no nectar or pollen, vs. the standard flower.