Echinacea atrorubens

Fruits

Echinacea atrorubens - Topeka Purple Coneflower is a herbaceous perennial plant growing from 50 to 90 cm tall from 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 long and 0.5–3 cm wide, the margins are normally entire. The flowering stems or peduncles are 20–50 cm long ending with one flower head typically. The flowering "cones" with paleae 9–15 mm long, with the ends red to orange-tipped, usually straight, and prickly-pointed. Ray flower corollas purple colored or rarely pink or white. Discs or cones are ovoid to conic in shape 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 tan in color and 4–5 mm long with faces finely tuberculate, glabrous. This species has 11 chromosomes.^[1]

Flowering occurs in late spring. Native to Kansas, Oklahoma and parts of Texas were it is found growing in dry soils around limestone or sandstone outcroppings and prairies.^[2]

Synonyms: Rudbeckia atrorubens Nuttall, J. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia 7: 80. 1834

References

1. ↑ Echinacea atrorubens in Flora of North America @ efloras.org
2. ↑ Distribution Map of Echinacea atrorubens