Echinacea purpurea Big Kahuna - Purple Coneflower

The 'Big Kahuna' Echinacea is an excellent recent hybrid variety of Echinacea, offering a multitude of large flowers in a dazzling mango orange, perfect for adding a beautiful touch of colour to the garden, as well as the terrace, throughout the summer. It is a floriferous, medium-sized variety, with robust and upright stems, strong against the wind. The flowers with prominent reddish-brown centres bloom from July to September. Truly beautiful and intensely cheerful, this perennial also provides very beautiful flowers for cutting or drying. It is also a very resistant plant that adapts to many growing conditions as long as it doesn't lack sunlight. Essential in gardens that make room for nature!

Native to the western United States, from Georgia to Michigan through Oklahoma and Ohio, Echinacea purpurea is a strong-willed perennial that doesn't resemble anything known, but confidently colonizes rocky meadows, savannas, open woodlands, and roadside edges in its natural habitat. Through hybridization with other species, it has produced numerous cultivars with varied colours, of all sizes, always very easy to grow.

'Big Kahuna' is a variety selected in 2014 at the famous North American nursery Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. It is part of the “Prairie Pillars” series, just like the cultivar ‘Fragrant Angel’. ‘Big Kahuna’ has a relatively compact habit, forming a dense and sturdy clump that reaches 50cm (20in) in height and width. This plant does not weaken or collapse, showing very good durability. The deciduous, opposite, lanceolate, green leaves are covered in rough hairs. The flowering occurs from July to September and is highly visited by butterflies. The branched, greenish-red stems are topped with a large solitary head inflorescence, with a prominent, bristly, reddish-brown disk surrounded by a collar of orange ligules. The fruit is an achene that releases seeds which birds are fond of. This plant anchors firmly and deeply in the soil, thanks to its well-developed root system.

The 'Big Kahuna' Echinacea offers remarkably colourful flowering, bringing a lot of dynamism and good mood to even the most modest decor. It is used in mixed borders with other white varieties or in the company of easy and generous annuals such as Nigellas, poppies, Amaranths, or Centaureas. Complete the scene by mixing in some ornamental grasses like Stipa tenuifolia, Schizachyrium scoparium 'Blue Heaven', Muhlenbergia capillaris...Splendid in borders, the beautiful colours of the purple coneflower are also very beautiful in fresh or dried flower arrangements.

Properties: In homeopathy, its root is used to fight colds and strengthen the immune system. These properties were already used by Native Americans. The name Echinacea comes from the Greek echinos, which means "hairy or like a hedgehog," and acea, which means "having the shape of," alluding to the flower centres. Purpurea means "purple."