Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, is a common plant of summer and is found in many gardens with quite a few medicinal qualities. The flowers are reddish-purple with 15 to 20 rays and the toothed leaves alternate along the stem. It was used by the Choctaw and Delaware Indians used the plant as a cough medicine and venereal disease remedy. Western Medicine used Echinacea as an antiseptic but don’t use it if you have autoimmune disease. It was used for typhoid fever, plague and a-dynamic fevers, gangrene, cerebrospinal meningitis and syphilis.

Keep your eyes and ears open and your powder dry.

Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea Sources

Felter, Harvey Wickes, M.D., and John Uri Lloyd, Phr. M., Ph. D. King’s American Dispensatory, 1898. Web. 08Feb02. Purple Coneflower pg. 671-677

Foster, Steven and James A. Duke. The Peterson Field Guide Series; A Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America. 2nd. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000. Print. Purple Coneflower pg. 226-227

Moerman Daniel E., Native American Ethnobotany, Portland: Timber Press. 1998. Print. Purple Coneflower pg. 206

Newcomb, Lawrence. Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977. Print. Purple Coneflower pg. 382-383

United States Department of Agriculture. Plant Database. Web.