Purple Coneflower

What’s blooming: Second generation snapdragon, single purple aster plant, chrysanthemums, one blanket flower, one golden hairy aster, chocolate flower near house.
What’s still green: Juniper, arborvitae, roses, forsythia, privet, yucca, prickly pear, honeysuckle, daylily, red hot poker, baptista, sweet pea, vinca, golden spur columbine, rock rose, hartweig, yellow evening primrose, yellow flax, sea pink, hollyhock, winecup, catmint, calmintha, salvias, oriental poppy, pinks, soapworts, bouncing Bess, coral bells, beardtongues, globemallow, Jupiter’s beard, snakeweed, senecio, yarrow, Mount Atlas daisy, coreopsis, perky Sue, Mexican hat, black-eyed Susan, tansy, dandelion, needle, June, blue grama and other grasses.
What’s gray, blue or gray-green: Piñon, winterfat, saltbush, loco, snow-in-summer, California poppy, Silver King artemisia.
What’s red or orange: Tamarix, prairie rose, spirea, snowball, sand cherry, cholla, leadplant, white beardtongue, pink evening primrose, purple coneflower; purple sand cherry dropping leaves, barberry turning yellow.
What’s turning yellow: Siberian elm, cottonwood, willow, globe willow, apples, apricot, Apache plume, iris, phlox, blue flax, purple ice plant, Rumanian sage, sidalcea, sedum, Saint John’s wort, Mönch aster; catalpa, Bradford pear, peach, cherries, lilacs, caryopteris dropping leaves.
What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, rochea.
Animal sightings: Birds heard rustling branches but not seen.
Weather: Early morning temperatures flirt with 32 degrees, clear, starry nights; last rain, 10/14/2008; 9:58 hours of daylight today.
Weekly update: Some thirteen years ago I bought two purple coneflowers in Santa Fe for the garage. One survived and by 1998 had become established enough to put out multiple stalks and a daughter. The following year more seedlings appeared and I decided to help the process by breaking apart the seed heads, like I do with marigolds.
I learned one painful lesson. Not all composites are alike, and knowledge from one cannot always be transferred to another. If I’d been raised at a time when one learned smatterings of Greek and Latin, I might have known the root for Echinacea meant spiny. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s made this mistake: King’s American Dispensatory described the fruiting head as a hedgehog in 1898.
Later I realized this was the same Echinacea purpurea people were proposing as an alternative treatment for AIDS, cancer, the common cold, and whatever other condition could not be explained by modern medicine. I also realized how many made the same kinds of mistakes by thinking by analogy and how much knowledge has been lost since medical practice coalesced around William Osler’s 1892 medical text and the later formation of the FDA.
The plant promoted by King was Echinacea angustifolia, which grows on limestone plains east of the Rockies where many tribes used the large taproot for medicine. H. F. C. Meyer heard about saparidu hahts for snakebite from Pawnee and, like other doctors of the period, tested it on himself: he claimed he let a rattlesnake bite him in 1871, then bathed the bite with a tincture and drank some of the liquid.
Having survived, he wanted to market it commercially, and in 1885 sent specimens to John King, one of the leading eclectic physicians. King did more tests and began promoting it through the Eclectic Medical Journal in 1887. By 1903 it was so popular, King’s Dispensatory warned "it has suffered the usual over-estimation, and the exaggerated claims" made for new remedies. One even claimed it cured impotency.
Purpurea grows in parts of the Mississippi drainage and has fibrous roots which make it easier to transplant, and facilitated its adaptation as a garden plant. King’s handbook indicates it too was used with for medicine, but seems to have been limited to treating syphilis. Who knows if it was the confusion of species, the easier availability of the garden plant, or the association with sexually transmitted diseases that led to its first use for AIDS.
In the early twentieth century, pharmacists and physicians knew the significance of species, and also knew angustifolia roots from the Smokey Hills area of Kansas and Nebraska were better than those from marshes, and that methods of digging and curing roots mattered. Eclectic manuals described the roots in detail; chemists devised tests to distinguish good extracts from false or adulterated ones; dosages were clearly defined.
After the introduction of sulfa, the interest in angustifolia declined, and with it the body of knowledge accumulated by doctors accustomed to seeing themselves as natural scientists and pharmacists trained to judge for themselves the purity of their products. When coneflower became popular in the 1990's, researchers discovered commercial preparations, made outside the jurisdiction of the FDA, could use either species, leaves or roots, in varying levels of potency. Medical experimenters were no more knowledgeable about the differences and their varied results added to the confusion about the efficacy of the herb.
Since, chemists have suggested polysaccarides from purpurea may be the agent that promotes the growth of T-cells. Others have found purpurea extracts increase the number of killer cells in aging mice that lead to higher survival rates from leukemia. However, researchers are still trying to identify the specific chemical or group of chemicals that can be used in the replicable tests necessary to send something for FDA approval.
In the meantime, the ignorance that follows from a paradigm shift continues, especially now that malpractice suits are used to establish accountability. I have a friend who found Echinacea root for sale with no instructions for use. Since it was a root, she chewed it like she would a carrot. Her body spent the better part of two days renouncing her. Since that’s not one of the reported allergic reactions, she has no idea if it was the root that was toxic for her, or if it had been contaminated by a preservative or some fungus.
So while scientists are relearning the knowledge of previous generations of herbal practitioners, people like my friend and I are left to relearning the lessons of childhood. She’s a bit more cautious about what she puts in her mouth, and I’m a whole lot more careful about grabbing an unknown flower.
Notes: Eclectic practitioners were somewhere between homeopathists, allopathists, and physicians in the competing medical theories during the nineteenth century.Felter, Harvey Wickes and John Uri Lloyd. King's American Dispensatory, 1898, Henriette Kress’s copy available online.Gilmore, Melvin R. Uses of Plants by the Indians of the Missouri River Region, 1919, reports Pawnee use for snake bites.
Kindscher, Kelly. The Conservation Status of Echinacea Species, 2006.
Osler, William. The Principles and Practice of Medicine, 1892.

Photograph: Purple coneflower after first frosts, 26 October 2008, with Silver King artemisia.