Echinacea Sunny Meadow Mama - Purple Coneflower

Echinacea Sunny Meadow Mama is a variety of echinacea that offers one of the best combinations in terms of habit, floribundity, and colour. This perennial plant with excellent durability provides a particularly generous, bright yellow summer flowering. As radiant as it is generous, it thrives in a sunny border, alongside perennials and annuals in shades of blue, purple, and orange for a captivating visual effect.

Native to the western United States, from Georgia to Michigan through Oklahoma and Ohio, Echinacea purpurea is a perennial with a strong character that naturally colonizes rocky meadows, savannas, clear undergrowth, and roadside edges. 'Sunny Meadow Mama' is part of a line of echinaceas selected in the Netherlands by AB-Cultivars for their flower power. The plant forms a clump approximately 55 cm (22in) high and 50 cm (20in) wide. This plant does not weaken or collapse, demonstrating excellent durability. The opposite lanceolate leaves are dark green and covered in rough hairs. The abundant flowering from July to October is loved by butterflies. The branched stems each terminate in a solitary flower head, surrounded by very bright yellow petals that hang down. The fruit is an achene that releases seeds that birds are fond of. This plant firmly and deeply anchors itself in the soil thanks to its well-developed root system.

Echinacea Sunny Meadow Mama can be grown in the ground or in a large pot, in full sun, in any well-drained soil that is not too dry in summer. This perennial can be planted in borders mixed with other compact varieties of echinacea, or alongside compact tritomas, achilleas, daisies, 'Echinops, and coreopsis. Lighten the scene by adding some ornamental grasses like Stipa tenuifolia, Muhlenbergia capillaris, etc. The beautiful colours of echinacea are also loved in fresh or dried flower arrangements.

A medicinal plant: In homoeopathy, echinacea root is used to fight colds and strengthen the immune system, properties first used by Native Americans. The name Echinacea comes from the Greek word echinos, meaning "hedgehog-like," and acea, meaning "having the shape of," referring to the appearance of the flower's centre.