Echinacea purpurea 'Ruby Star' - Purple Coneflower cultivar

Sizes available: #1 (Trade gallon)

Basics: zones 3-8, 24-36" x 24", full to part sun, raspberry-pink ray petals held parallel to the ground around a pronounced burnt orange cone, blooms in mid summer, likes well-drained dry to medium moisture soils and is not picky as to soil type or pH.

Common names: this is a seed-selected strain of Purple Coneflower

Family: Asteraceae

Origin/Distribution: The great German seed house, Jelitto, introduced this cultivar, which was developed as a seed-selected strain from the cultivar 'Magnus'. The species is native from Ohio to Michigan and Iowa and south to Louisiana and Georgia and has naturalized all over the northeastern U. S. including parts of New England. 

Habitat: moist meadows, open woodlands and clearings, prairies

More: Attracts pollinating bees, wasps, and butterflies, makes a good cut flower either fresh or as a dried seed head, deer and rabbit resistant, will self sow if happy but may not come true from seed especially if you grow other coneflowers with which it might cross. Songbirds enjoy the seed. The dry, darkened cones provide a striking graphic repetition in the winter garden. The species has been used medicinally.

Nursery: Van Berkum

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons: Bee feeding from an E. purpurea flower