Echinacea 'Cheyenne Spirit' Is A Stunning Nativar

Echinacea 'Cheyenne Spirit' blooms in my garden

A few years ago I picked up a couple Echinacea ‘Cheyenne Spirit’ plants at a big box store due to my pesky habit of buying pretty things. This cultivar of the native coneflower plant isn’t the typical purple or magenta—instead it has an array of red, pink, and orange flowers, and some flowers that look (to me, anyway) like a sunset. It has extremely sturdy stems and maxes out at about two feet tall, so it’s more well-behaved than the straight species Echinacea that grows to four feet tall and flops over in heavy rains.

One way that Cheyenne Spirit isn’t well-behaved? It decides what color it is, and it seems to settle into something that may be different from what you brought home from the store. My plants originally had many different colored flowers on the same plant with some deep pinks in the mix. The past two years, my plants have settled into petals that are a pink to orange ombre. It’s lovely, but if you buy this plant you have to be open to whatever color it decides to be.

Should you plant native cultivars?

Sometimes native cultivars like Cheyenne Spirit are criticized because they are bred for human interest and do not necessarily benefit the ecosystem as much as straight species plants do. For example, double flowers can impede access to nectar, and color changes might make plants less appealing to beneficial insects.

Luckily, Mt. Cuba Center runs trials of native cultivars where they literally observe and count pollinator visits to plants so that we can know which cultivars do the most for the ecosystem. Because let’s be honest—while straight species may be better for the environment, not everyone’s garden can accommodate a four-foot coneflower plant that falls over in a rainstorm. I’m sure local insects and birds would rather have a native cultivar than a non-native plant or turf grass.

While Cheyenne Spirit wasn’t the top performing coneflower cultivar, it did score four out of five stars. And, its single flower leaves behind a delicious seed head for goldfinches to eat. If you were wondering, Mt. Cuba Center’s five-star coneflower cultivars were Echinacea purpurea ‘Pica Bella,’ Echinacea ‘Sensation Pink,’ and Echinacea ‘Santa Fe.’

Elsewhere:

Some residents of Tucson have been reaping the benefits of harvesting rainwater. Listen to the full story from Here and Now about how cisterns and diverting stormwater from roads can make a difference to a community.