Photo: Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Echinacea (Purple Coneflower)

Echinacea purpurea

A North American prairie daisy with drooping purple rays and a spiky orange cone, now grown across Europe as the best-known cold-season herb.

Educational content, not medical or professional advice. In an emergency call your local emergency number (112 in Europe) first. Never eat a wild plant or mushroom because of a website or photo.

⚠️ Echinacea is in the daisy family. People allergic to ragweed, chamomile, chrysanthemums, yarrow, arnica or marigolds can react, and there are documented cases of severe allergic reactions including anaphylaxis, particularly in people with asthma or hay fever.

⚠️ Anyone with an autoimmune condition such as multiple sclerosis, lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, and anyone taking immunosuppressant medication or who has had a transplant, should not use it without a doctor's agreement, because of its traditional reputation for acting on the immune system.

⚠️ It is traditionally used in short courses rather than continuously. Do not take it indefinitely.

⚠️ It may interact with medicines processed by the liver, including caffeine, and with immunosuppressants. Ask a pharmacist if you take any regular medication.

⚠️ Do not use it in pregnancy or breastfeeding without a midwife or doctor's agreement, and do not give it to young children; regulators in several European countries restrict its use in under-twelves.

⚠️ Rare liver problems have been reported. Do not combine it with other things that stress the liver, including alcohol and paracetamol taken heavily.

⚠️ A fever above 39 degrees Celsius, difficulty breathing, chest pain, a stiff neck, confusion, or a rash that does not fade under pressure, means you need medical help now, not a herbal product.

⚠️ Persistent or serious symptoms need a doctor, not a plant. In an emergency call your local emergency services, 112 in Portugal and across the EU.

Confused with

Other Echinacea species (E. angustifolia, E. pallida)

Danger: Not dangerous, but different in chemistry and in traditional use, and often substituted in commerce.

How to tell: E. angustifolia is shorter, under 60 cm, with narrow leaves and short pale rays. E. pallida has very long, thin, pale drooping rays. E. purpurea is the tall one with broad rough leaves and rich rose-purple rays.

Coneflowers and rudbeckias (Rudbeckia species)

Danger: Harmless but not the traditional herb.

How to tell: Rudbeckias have yellow or orange rays around a dark smooth cone. Echinacea purpurea has purple-pink rays around a spiny orange-brown cone.

Ragworts and groundsels (Senecio, Jacobaea species) mistakenly gathered as garden daisies

Danger: Real danger. Ragworts contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids and cause cumulative, irreversible liver damage.

How to tell: Ragworts are yellow-flowered with many small heads in a branched cluster and ragged deeply cut leaves. Echinacea has a single large purple head per stem on a stiff rough stalk.

Leaves

Alternate, rough and sandpapery on both sides with coarse stiff hairs, dark green. Lower leaves broadly oval to lance-shaped, 10 to 20 cm long on long stalks, with three to five strong veins running from the base along the leaf and a coarsely toothed edge. Upper leaves smaller and stalkless.

Flowers

One large head per stem, 7 to 12 cm across. Twelve to twenty long strap-shaped rays in rose-purple or pink, which droop downwards away from the centre, around a raised dome of dark orange-brown, spiky, bristly disc florets. That spiny cone gives the plant its name, from the Greek for hedgehog.

Stem

Single or few, round, stiff, rough-hairy, solid, green sometimes flushed purple, mostly unbranched below the flower.

Smell or taste

Little smell from the flowers. The root has a faint sweet then sharply pungent quality. Do not use taste to identify: identify by the drooping purple rays and the spiny orange cone.

Habitat

Garden borders, herb beds, wildflower plantings and market gardens. Not a European native, so it is grown, not foraged. It does well in Portuguese gardens with sun and free-draining soil.

Preparation

The flowering tops are cut in the second or third year, at the point of full flowering, and the roots lifted in autumn of the third or fourth year, when the plant has enough root to give. Dry the flowering tops in a dark airy place for one to two weeks until brittle. Wash and split roots, then dry them slowly in a warm airy place until they snap; roots are dense and take two to four weeks. Store both in sealed, dark, labelled jars and use within a year. The two traditional forms are a tincture, made by steeping the fresh or dried plant in alcohol for several weeks and straining, and a decoction of the root, which means simmering, not steeping, because a hard woody root will not give up much in a teapot: the chopped root is covered with cold water, brought to a simmer and held there covered for fifteen to twenty minutes, then strained. This guide gives no dose. Echinacea is traditionally taken in defined short courses, and if you are going to use it, use a properly labelled pharmacy product and read it.

Traditional use

Echinacea comes from the Great Plains, where it was one of the most widely used plants of the Lakota and other peoples, applied to bites, stings, snakebite and sores and taken for sore throats. European and North American herbalists adopted it in the nineteenth century, and it became a standard household preparation in Germany in the twentieth. Today it is taken across Europe, in Portugal included, as the herb people reach for at the start of the cold season. That popularity is cultural history. Research on whether it shortens or prevents colds is mixed and much of it is unconvincing, and this guide makes no claim that it does anything. It will certainly not treat an infection.

Harvest rule

Grow your own. Echinacea is not wild in Europe, and in its native North American range several species are seriously depleted by wild digging, with E. angustifolia and E. tennesseensis of real conservation concern. Buying wild-harvested echinacea root perpetuates that. In your own garden, leave plants at least three years before lifting a root, divide clumps rather than destroying them, and leave the seed heads standing over winter for goldfinches.

Equinácea (PT); equinácea (ES)