My name is echinacea.

I grow in a flower garden next to lavender and calliopsis. We were all planted here by seed and we will continue to grow and spread our family for many, many years to come.

My ancestors are from many different parts of North America. We are a variety of colors ranging from light pink, to white to dark purple, to yellow. I have many nicknames including: cone flower, black eyed susan, brown eyed susan, ozark coneflower, and White Swan.

Long ago, it was discovered that I was placed on this Earth with multiple natural benefits to humans. For hundreds of years, the Plains Indians used me as an antiseptic, an analgesic, and to treat poisonous insect and snakebites, toothaches, sore throat, wounds and communicable diseases such as mumps, smallpox, and measles. I was also used by the Cheyenne, Choctaw, Comanche, Dakota, Meskawaki Fox, Pawnee, Sioux, and Omaha tribes.

The Early American Settlers adopted some of these Native American practices and added some of their own uses such as treatment for saddle sores on horses.

My power and beauty has been highly respected throughout America and my use has spread to Europe and Asia.

There was a brief time in history when I was called things like “quack remedy” and “useless”.

As medicine has advanced, many studies and trials have been done on me (especially in Germany) that have shown me to, in fact, be highly effective in boosting human’s immune systems by increasing the number of white blood cells and, thereby, increasing their ability to fight infections.

In fact, I have been so busy participating in studies about myself that since the 1930s, there have been more than 400 journal articles published describing my chemistry, pharmacology and clinical use- the majority of which, have confirmed my effectiveness in treating viral and bacterial infection, healing wounds and reducing inflammation.

In addition to helping humans from the inside, I am very beautiful and love to bring them joy from the outside.

Growing Echinacea has become very popular for home gardeners throughout North America and Europe. I am very easy to grow and I like to stick around and reproduce so I can bring as much beauty as possible to the kind humans who enjoy me.

I have been here for a very long time and I plan to stay- please, enjoy me!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 10:23 am and is filed under Echinacea, Flowers, home garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.