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Kathy’s Garden Writing |
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GRAY-HEAD CONEFLOWER Ratibida pinnata is the quintessential prairie flower. Sun-kissed and windswept, it may well have blown to Pennsylvania from Kansas. It can be found here in roadside ditches, railroad and utility right-of-ways, and abandoned fields. As Americans go native and attempt to evoke the heartland, Pennsylvania gardeners are also including ratibida in their wildflower plantings. The swept-back bright-yellow petals surround an elongated gray center maturing to brown, offering up seeds and nectar to creatures on the wing. In the aster family, it has been called prairie coneflower, droopy coneflower, yellow coneflower, and “an acorn atop a yellow droopy daisy.” Leaves are blue-green and toothed, sparse toward the top, clustered and hairy at the base. Growing from three to six feet high, and needing at least half day sun, this plant mixes well with low prairie grasses such as Little Bluestem or Sideoats Grama. Buds burst into bloom from July into September. Then the central cones continue to stand erect through the predations of fall and winter, lending a skeletal shape to the hibernating landscape. Very undemanding, it thrives in sandy soil or clay, through deluge or drought, to return year after year for another tour of duty. Native Americans used the roots to ease toothache, and the cones and leaves for an anise-flavored tea. Early pioneers also put the plant to work, gathering dried seed heads to scent and protect clothing. Contemporary landscapers are adding gray-head coneflower to seed mixes for erosion control and site reclamation, in addition to creating beautiful habitats for wildlife and humans alike. This unusual-looking composite flower seems to embody American values of sturdy endurance, with few frills or showy pretense. But grand it is indeed, massed in waving fields of grassland, welcoming the birds, butterflies, and bees who rely on its bounty. It invokes, for all, the heritage of this great land. Kathleen Arcuri Published June 2008 -- Inside Pennsylvania |