Medicinal Monday -Purple and Pretty the Eastern Coneflower

The Purple Coneflower is a classic lavender-pink flower with big daisy-like blossoms and slightly drooping petals that make it hard to miss. It is still a widely used medicinal plant of the Plains Indians and many communities in the Mid-West and Northeast. In Western tribes like the Ute, coneflowers are associated with elk and called by the name "elk root." It is believed that wounded elk seek out this plant as a medicine. There are many fascinating uses for this plant medicinally and ceremonially.

About Purple Coneflowers

Coneflowers are a native wildflower of North American that is in the sunflower family. Its' habitats include dry open woods, prairies, and barrens. This is a herbaceous perennial that grows up to 47 inches tall and ten inches wide at maturity. It blooms throughout the summer and is easily identified by its cone-shaped flowering heads that are usually purple in the wild. The flower heads are both male and female and the plant is pollinated by butterflies and bees. Coneflowers can also be propagated from seeds and by dividing clumps of the root in the spring or autumn.

Medicinal & Ceremonial Uses

Native Americans use this plant to treat many ailments including wounds, burns, insect bites, toothaches, throat infections, and snakebite. The roots of the plant are chewed or made into a tea for internal problems. Sometimes the roots are pulverized and the powder is put on external wounds. The Choctaw chew the root and make a tincture from it to treat coughs. Delaware and the Delaware Oklahoma combine the root of purple coneflowers with staghorn sumac roots to treat general disease. It is also widely used as a painkiller. 

Coneflower has also been chewed ritually during sweat lodge ceremonies and at Sun Dances. The coneflower is considered to be one of the sacred Life Medicines of the Navajo Tribe.

Did You Know...

The Greek name of the plant is Echinacea Purpurea. Echinacea means "spiny one" in reference to spiny sea urchins and Purpurea means reddish-purple.

Many people use purple coneflowers as ornamental plants because they can grow in the light or in the shade and thrive in both moist and dry soil. 

Rabbits eat the foliage of this plant when it first emerges in the spring.

Today, many herbalists recommend it to help boost the immune system and to help the body fight infection.