PURPLE CONEFLOWER 



Btaunetia purpurea (L.) Britt. 



June - August Tt is a startlingly different sort of color, that purple- 



Prairie roadsides jjink of the purple coneflower blossoming in a damp 



ditch beside the road or below the ballast of a rail- 

 road embankment. The plant is a stately one and is often used in gardens; 

 particularly the purple coneflower is often sold by plant nurseries. This 

 plant is stiff with alternate, rough, tapering leaves on a hairy, rough 

 stem topped with a single large flower. The rays curl somewhat or droop 

 below the rounded, conical center. This at first is pur])le, but when the 

 orange stamens come out. the coh)!- contrast between the pui-ple, the 

 orange, and the ])urple-])irJv rays is not always too pleasing to the eye. 

 Out along the railroad tracks or on the broad sweep of sunny prairie, it 

 is part of a landscape which often puts orange butterfly weed and pink 

 phlox together without too obvious clashing. 



Of these two coneflowers, the pur[)le is considered the more beautiful. 

 Pale coneflower {Bmunerm p{ilJida) has paler rays which droop as if they 

 felt the hand of blight or wilt u])on them. The round, stiff, bristly cone 

 stands erect; the thin, nari'dw lays hang low in Ww bright sunshine. 

 The plant is smaller than the pi'eceding, has long, narrow, rough leaves 

 both basal and alternate on the stem, and, like the other, is a plant which 

 is typical of ditches and roadsides oF the v.ct pi-airic l>oth bloom from 

 late June through July and occasionally well inlo August. 



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