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Echinacea 'Art's Pride'

The idea for this wonderful ground-breaking breeding Orange Meadowbrite project was sown by Ronald McGregor's 1968 publication The taxonomy of the genus Echinacea (Compositae) (Univ. of Kansas Science Bulletin. 48: 113-142), in which the author reported that different species of Echinacea could be crossed.

Strangely enough, no one in the horticultural world seemed to pick up on that information.

Not until 1995 when Dr. Jim Ault, Ph.D, the Chicago Botanic Garden Garden's Director of Ornamental Plant Research selected Echinacea as one of the genus for a new perennial plant breeding program being initiated at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, Illinois, U.S.A.

Ault was already fond of and familiar with the Coneflowers as garden plants, but after reading McGregor's paper he realised that there was literally an untapped goldmine waiting to be discovered in the genus.

The next two years were spent assembling and evaluating a collection of available species and cultivars of Coneflowers.

Some of the plants were eliminated as not being reliably hardy or not being showy enough to utilise in breeding and by 1997 Ault began to cross plants. The focus was on interspecific crosses in the hope of combining unique traits from the different species, such as the compactness and floriferousness of E. tennesseensis, the drought tolerance of E. angustifolia, the large flowers and long bloom season of E. purpurea, and so forth.

Crossing coneflowers is relatively easy. The showy, petal-like ray flowers are sterile, but all the small disk flowers are fertile, producing both pollen and being capable of producing seed.

Coneflowers are self-incompatible (cannot produce seed when self-pollinated).

The flowers are covered with pollination bags to keep the bees from making the crosses and pollen is collected from one parent plant, then brushed with a small paint brush on the stigmas of the other parent plant. Seed is collected in the fall (Autumn), germinated the following February, and the plants put out in the field that spring.

Depending on the cross, up to 50% of the plants may bloom in the first year, and all of them in the second year.

Typically, a plant will be used for crossing in its second or third year, once its habit, bloom colour and season have been evaluated.

Coneflowers have proven to be very promiscuous - any two species can be crossed, and many of the hybrid combinations are in turn also fertile, which makes the potential for combining traits from the different species almost limitless. Dr. Ault concentrated on the following species in his crosses; E. angustifolia, E. paradoxa, E. purpurea (using both white flowered and pink-flowered forms), and E. tennesseensis.

Not all of the crosses have produced fertile plants, or plants that appeared useful.

While Dr. Ault was hoping that this cross would produce some novel flower colours, the results have far exceeded his expectations. Several plants have been selected for propagation and potential introduction.

The first introduction from this program is Echinacea 'Art's Pride' - Orange Meadowbrite.

Art Nolan (past director of The Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Foundation) was a prominent donor to the Chicago Botanic Garden.

The Rice Foundation donated a lot of money to fund the breeding work of Dr. Jim Ault - hence the name 'Art's Pride'

Updated July 22nd 2004

Angela Treadwell-Palmer / Chicagoland Grows

PHOTO COPYRIGHT © 2002 ANGELA TREADWELL-PALMER

Posted: 22 April 2004
Last modified: 13 May 2007

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