Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Echinacea 'coconut lime'

This Echinacea is part of the "Cone-fection Series" bred by a man by the name of Arie Blom. Coconut Lime has overwintered wonderfully for the past three years, it is a strong bloomer with lots of bloom heads (see picture) on each plant. The flower starts out rather flat but slowly begins to form a unique pom-pom type cone. which lasts a long time. My plant started to bloom a week or two ago and will continue to bloom all the way to first frost. The picture to the right I actualy took last year on July 20th. This variety has white petals with a white to slightly greenish cone at the center. One extremely nice characteristic is that the white flower stays clean throughout the bloom, no brown splotches. One customer from Peoria Il. asked if I had heard of any issues with this reverting back to non-double heritage and I can safely say that no I have not heard of or had that experience. It certainly would have in my garden by now if it does. Some people feel that these stray too far away from the typical coneflower, I would appreciate anyones comments.

2 comments:

  1. I bought one of these last year and it didn't survive the winter in my garden. Kind of weird since I've gotten tender plants like Elephants Ears, gladiolas to overwinter in my garden in Chicago.

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  2. I have this located up against a south facing fence on the North side of my yard. It is very sunny and dry. I don't think it would have any problems on a more moist location, but too moist is always a problem with echinaceas. What time of year did you buy and plant it?

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