Echinacea

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

High

As a honey crop

Feeds the colony but rarely yields a surplus

Which bees, and why

Worked by honey bees, bumblebees, small solitary bees and butterflies together. In its native range it supports specialist prairie bees; in European gardens it serves as a generalist late-summer platform.

Small open florets on a raised cone with accessible nectar — usable by short-tongued bees and butterflies alike.

Worth knowing

Good for both, over a long late-summer season, from a plant that copes with heat and drought when many border perennials stop producing.

Flowering

In flower

July to September (northern hemisphere)

A long season, with the florets on each cone opening in a ring that advances outward over two or three weeks.

When nectar flows

Nectar and pollen from hundreds of small fertile florets on the cone, opening in succession rather than all at once — which is why one head stays worth visiting for so long.

Year-to-year variation

Reliable and drought-tolerant. Not a honey crop.

Growing it

Conditions

Full sun, well-drained soil. It tolerates drought well and dislikes winter wet.

Size

60-120 cm.

Native range

The central and eastern United States, in prairie and open woodland.

Suits

Small gardens, Large gardens, Meadow or wildflower area, Containers and window boxes

• Choose the plain single-flowered species or simple cultivars. The heavily bred double and pompom echinaceas have converted the fertile cone into sterile petals and offer very little.
• Leave the cones standing over winter. Goldfinches work them hard, and the stems provide overwintering structure.
• Often short-lived on heavy or wet soil. Sharp drainage is the single thing that makes it persist.

What it looks like

Upright stems with coarse hairy leaves and large daisy flowers whose purple-pink ray petals droop back from a prominent orange-brown domed cone.