Everyone grows echinacea for the purple petals, and the interesting part happens after they drop. What is left is a cone-shaped seed head like a small beehive, or a hedgehog stuck on the end of a stem. That is not a loose comparison: the name comes from the Greek ekhinos, meaning hedgehog, and it is exactly right. They are genuinely prickly, so handle them by the stems.
The cones dry to burnt orange, chocolate brown and deep bronze, which is a warmer autumn palette than the muted tan most autumn stems give you. They are also about the toughest thing in the dried range. They do not shed, crumble or squash, and they survive house moves and years of being rearranged. Two or three in a mixed arrangement give the eye somewhere to rest, which softer material cannot do. Snipped off the stem they work as objects in their own right, in a shallow bowl or scattered down a table.
These are a reduced grade. They are still sculptural, but the shape, the density of spines and the colour are not up to our first-grade bunches. Roughly 5 stems at 40 to 50cm. Cut in late summer after the petals have gone and before the birds strip the seed, which is a narrower window than it sounds.
