I remember when life was simple. Purple coneflowers were purple. Sure, occasionally you got a seed with recessive genes and it was white. If you planted the white one away from the purple one you could have white ones. If you planted it with the purple ones the recessive gene soon gave way to the purples and the white ones were gone.

Then maybe fifteen years ago some breeders/researchers decided that maybe they could work magic with Echinacea. Scouring the country, they found 11 different species of coneflowers. Most came from western (drier) soils, rather light low fertility soils with excellent drainage and soils with generally high pH.

If you take that last sentence to the garden, I would expect your happiness with coneflowers to increase.

Traditionally, we had the species Echinacea purpurea or selections of it in our gardens. The researches found three additional species: paradoxa (yellow), pallida (pink) and tennessensis (petal arrangement) that held promise in the garden. These can be grown from seed and thus should be relatively less expensive than the new hybrids.

After that, the fun or folly set in. My guess is that it has been mostly fun. A look at plant catalogs and one could make a list of Echinacea cultivars that would use your fingers and toes multiple times.

You can find red, orange, white, yellow and of course purple. You can find straight petals, over-lapping petals, drooping petals, narrow petals, wide petals and a few that have lost their way and look like zinnias or dahlias. Technically, they are rays not petals. But most of us will continue to call them petals. The current focus of research is on double or tubular rays now. They are coming.

Some are fragrant but my old sniffer often has problems with that claim.

If there is any folly it is that sometimes plants, including Echinaceas, get rushed to the market and the question gardeners must answer is, are they stable and really perennial? To me it seems that there is a correlation between poor quality and the amount of magazine and advertising hype a plant gets. I hope I'm wrong.

In spring 2008, I planted ten of a hybrid yellow one in front of my house. They flopped a bit but were fine. This year I have seven yellow ones, two purple ones and one of the best white plants I have ever seen. Of course there were purple ones in the immediate area,I had near complete success and stability when I planted the hybrids away from the purple ones and the opposite when I planted them together.

Coneflowers will get aster yellows (spread by a certain leafhopper) and wilt. Aster yellows will distort flowers and growth and create a green freak. Wilt is like it sounds, the plant wilts and dies for no good reason. I have never seen yellows and seldom see wilt in a mixed garden.

This article idea started when I heard one of the prominent Echinacea breeders speak while visiting an Echinacea trial. The trial was on a level stretch of heavy clay soil, a history of high fertility, mulched well and the previous use was an aster garden for cut flowers. If you suspect there would be some problems you were right.

Photo IDs: Top left Echinacea tenneseensis. Middle right Echinacea paradoxa. Bottom left Echinacea 'Tiki Torch'.