What kind of miracle plant is Echinacea, the cultivation of which is of interest not only from a decorative point of view?
Echinacea (old name is purple rudbeckia) is a perennial plant with beautiful flowers that resemble large chamomiles. In addition to the traditional pink-raspberry color, orange, yellow and white flowers can be found in modern selective echinacea species. Even the American Indians revealed the healing power of this plant, which helps to prevent many diseases. Therefore, echinacea, the cultivation of which they began to control by cultivation, became for them a real medicine.
Echinacea belongs to the family of Asteraceae, its homeland is North America. In nature, Echinacea grows as a wild plant mainly on the field, limestone wasteland, rocky hill, in the dry steppe and light forest. Its jagged, green leaves have an oval-narrow shape, with a more common pubescent surface on which veins are visible. You can also find this plant with a purple hue at the base of the stem. Large-sized flowers, the appearance of which occurs on stiff, straight-growing stems, reaching a height of one and a half meters, have a radial arrangement of petals, on which there is a cone-shaped protruding bristly core. Thanks to this core (receptacle) Echinacea in ancient Greece was called a hedgehog. The large dark rhizome of Echinacea is edible and has a sharp taste.
The genus of Echinacea has no more than nine species, of which only a few species (purple, pale and narrow-leaved species) are grown for medicinal use. A rhizome is suitable for these purposes, but a flower head is also used. Also sometimes used for the preparation of various medical solutions seeds and plant juice. So, echinacea is most often used as an immunostimulating component of medications, as well as an integral part of medicines in the treatment of influenza, colds, inflammations and infections.
Echinacea. Growing
The question will be relevant, but how to grow echinacea? If you want to enjoy the presence of decorative echinacea in your home greenhouse, you need to grow only purple and strange echinacea species, since only they are hybrid varieties of our modern plants that can grow at home.
Flowering of this plant falls from July to mid-October. Attracting a large number of pollen collectors, such as bees, to its flowers, it is capable of endowing honey produced from its pollen with excellent healing qualities. Echinacea, the cultivation of which does not cause particular difficulties, prefers to grow in slightly alkaline soil, less often it may require moisture-permeable soil. It is capable of growing in open sunny or dark shaded places. Echinacea can adapt to rain, arid, frosty conditions and can feel good on poor soils.
Also, Echinacea is not at all afraid of pests and diseases. Growing from seeds is relatively quick, so after planting, usually in the spring, it can bloom in two years. The optimum seed growth temperature is considered to be a temperature not exceeding thirteen degrees Celsius. If you prefer simple methods of reproduction, then it will be enough to dig up the plant and, having divided the rhizome, transplant it. This should be done in early spring or late autumn. The division of the roots of sufficiently mature plants should occur once every three to four years. It is also worth adding that self-seeding makes it possible for the plant to reproduce on its own.
If you remove the faded heads, then flowering echinacea even prolongs its flowering. Growing it, as you see, is not at all difficult, and the benefits are enormous.