Echinacea atrorubens

Fruits

Echinacea atrorubens, called the Topeka Purple Coneflower,^[2] is a North American species of plants in the sunflower family. It is native to eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, and eastern Texas in the south-central United States.^[3] It is found growing in dry soils around limestone or sandstone outcroppings and prairies.

Echinacea atrorubens is a perennial herb up to 90 cm (3 feet) tall with elongate-turbinate roots that are sometimes branched. The stems and foliage are usually hairy with appressed to ascending hairs 1.2 mm long (strigose), rarely some plants are glabrous. Stems light green or tan mottled in color. The basal leaves have petioles 0–12(–20) cm long and leaf blades typically 3 or 5-nerved, usually linear or lanceolate, rarely ovate, 5–30 cm (2-12 inches) long and 0.5–3.0 cm (0.2-1.2 inches) wide, the margins are normally entire. The flowering stems or peduncles are 20–50 cm (8-20 inches) long ending usually with only one flower head. The flowering "cones" with paleae 9–15 mm long, with the ends red to orange-tipped, usually straight, and prickly-pointed. Ray flower corollas are purple or rarely pink or white. Discs or cones are ovoid to conic and 25–35 wide and 20–40 mm tall. Disc corollas 4.5–5.5 mm long with lobes greenish to pink or purple. Seed cypselae are tan and 4–5 mm long with faces finely tuberculate, glabrous. This species has 11 chromosomes.^[2]

Flowering occurs in late spring.

References

1. ↑ The Plant List, Echinacea atrorubens (Nutt.) Nutt.
2. 1 2 in Flora of North America, Topeka Purple Coneflower, Echinacea atrorubens >
3. ↑ Biota of North America Program 2014 county distribution map