Yellow Coneflowers
This time of year reminds me of 1980, my first summer in the Ozarks. The memory trigger is the blooming of Echinacea along our roadside limestone glades. I was intrigued by the plant and when I closed my eyes in the evening, I saw brilliant Echinacea flowers. Hmmm, I thought, I better pay attention to this plant, and I did.
By 1984, I wrote several now obscure publications, and had drawn research attention to then serious adulteration problems, conservation issues, and problems related to development of cultivated supplies. The questions raised were solved by numerous graduate students and research groups, leading to a much better understanding of the history, botany, ecology, and development of Echinacea.
Some of that research evolved in unexpected ways. One, my real claim to fame is the kind of Echinacea in Ukraine. They started researching it to treat immune system-related diseases after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The majority of Echinacea grown commercially there is from Echinacea seed I wild collected in the Ozarks in the mid-1980s.
It was also a time when I was beginning to meet botanists in Arkansas and go on various field trips. And in 1980, the Arkansas Native Plant Society was chartered. One botanical friend with whom I went with on searches for rare plants was the late Richard H. Davis (1946-1983), a field ecologist for the Nature Conservancy under contract with the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission. He was particularly interested in rediscovering old locations for rare plants, recorded on herbarium specimens, but not seen in their native habitats for decades.
On one exciting trip in Stone County, we rediscovered the location for the globally rare yellow echinacea (Echinacea paradoxa var. paradoxa, Asteraceae).
The yellow coneflower is an Ozark endemic found in 17 or so Missouri counties and about five Arkansas counties. The paradox of this “purple coneflower” is that its ray flowers are yellow. It grows to four feet in height and has light green stems and leaves. The plant is smooth or only slightly hairy. The disk is usually dark brown.
Currently the plant can be seen along Hwy. 23 South a few hundred feet north of the Turpentine Creek, and along the loop road going into Lake Leatherwood City Park. This is an excellent example of an endemic Ozark wildflower—found nowhere else in the world that can be seen and enjoyed now.