purple coneflowers?

[Judy Cosler]

2 questions:

1. something has eaten the petals off some of my coneflowers. a squirrel or ????

1. is there any thing i can feed them to make them more purple. they are really PINK! do they react to the ph level the way some hydrangeas do??

((.)) ')) (((((((( ))(/)((

[Tom Randy]

Maybe squirrel, damn woodchucks (I think) are eating my Phlox. It's really pissing me off too. They get close to budding and the next morning they are chewed down like a tiny Paul Bunyon invaded them.

That one I don't know the answer to. Sorry.

[Cereus-validus]

Grasshoppers?

Coneflowers can be purple, pink or white but not on the same plant and the color cannot be changed. Its genetics not pH.

[escapee]

There are several new varieties of echinacea now, one of which is a rather pale purple to pink. I have several of them. They cannot change color. I have a very large stand of them in many places on my property and two years ago the grasshoppers got them bad. I started using Nosema locustae aka Nolo Bait (a biological control for grasshoppers) and I have not seen more than a dozen hoppers on the property.

Victoria

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[Vox Humana]

The Japanese beetles have emerged here (Cincinnati) and are eating my echinacea and calla lilies. I guess I will add them to list of pest to pick off. The cicadas are history except for the damage they left behind. The rains are gone and the slugs have disappeared. My brugmansia started to bloom this week and I thought of you.

[Bob S.]

I'm having the same problem. My coneflowers are faded this year - the purples are pink and the reds are purplish. The whites are still white though. We have had an abundance of rain so I'm guessing that it has flushed something out of the soil.

Bob S.

[GrampysGurl]

seedlings porobably wouldn't be same color as parent plant once they grew either especially if you have different color coneflowers nearby.

[escapee]

My brugmansia are all on their fourth set of blooms. I will take photo's when they open. This is their big bloom. Mine bloom all year in the greenhouse. I am so in love with them! Thanks for thinking of me.

V

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[Vox Humana]

I picked mine up at a sale in June of 2001. They were only about 6 inches long. They didn't bloom that year until I brought them inside. They bloomed around Thanksgiving and then I put them in the basement were they went dormant. Last year they bloomed very late as the temperatures started to drop at night. I didn't realize how much fertilizer they required, and they got all chlorotic and lost their leaves until you told me what to do. This year I am feeding them heavily and keeping them very moist. They look better than ever and I am happy to see them bloom so early. I hope they continue all summer. I don't know what varieties I have. One is white and is very heavily perfumed. The other starts out the palest pink and turn a salmon color. It doesn't have the intense fragrance that the white one has.

[Cereus-validus]

The flower color that appear on the plants is determined solely by the genes they contain. If they are hetrozygous, plants with different colors may appear in the F2 generation but only from the genes of the parent plants.

I have noticed that plants of a single color will eventually dominate to be the only color present in a population if that is the color preferred by the particular pollinator. The pollinators are the ones in control not you. They will actually ignore the flowers of a particular color they don't like.

[escapee]

Finally they have translated the book Englestrompeten into English. It is the only book in the world I know of which is dedicated to Brugmansia spp. In it, they have a fantastic section explaining how to identify what you have, or see somewhere. I bough the German edition years ago, now I own the English edition. It was well worth it. You can also visit this site:

for great photos.

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[Vox Humana]

Thanks. I will mark that page and see if I can figure out which brugmansias I have.