Cat Holmes
University of Georgia
The federally endangered smooth coneflower has gone by the
wayside– literally. The four wild populations that remain in
Georgia are all growing next to rural roadsides in the
northeast corner of the state.
A University of Georgia program to reintroduce and safeguard
the smooth coneflower species, Echinacea laevigata, is
underway. Two new populations of the wildflower have been
planted near the wild ones, in Habersham and Stephens counties,
but “not quite so close to the road,” said Heather Alley, who
heads up the flower restoration project at the State Botanical
Garden of Georgia.
As a horticulture graduate student in UGA College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Alley compared
different techniques in an effort to find the best way to
insure the flower’s survival in the wild. She looked at fall
versus spring planting, caging or not caging the plants to
protect them from predators and planting in clumps versus
planting singly.
As a result of her research, new sites of smooth coneflower,
planted in 2000, are flourishing today.
The USDA Forest Service, in conjunction with UGA’s Plant
Conservation Program, has made the reintroduction of the
smooth coneflower in Georgia part of its 10 year land
management plan.
“We’re looking at loblolly pine plantations as possible sites,”
said Doug Watson, wildlife biological technician for the
Chattahoochee National Forest. “We’ll either thin those areas
out or use intense prescribed fires to destroy the understory
and create the open areas and sunlight where these plants
thrive.”
Loss of habitat, through development and a decrease in the
number of forest fires, is the biggest threat to the smooth
coneflower’s survival, said Alley. “We estimate that two-
thirds of the original coneflower populations have been
destroyed,” she said. “[It] is now only found in Georgia, the
Carolinas and Virginia. Its range used to extend up to
Pennsylvania.”
Before, Alley explains, periodic wildfires would clear areas of
trees, creating the Piedmont prairie conditions needed for
species like the smooth coneflower to survive.
“Fire was important for early successional species,” she
said. “Since our land management practices now involve
protecting humans and their property by suppressing these
fires, the areas that were part of the Piedmont prairie remain
forested or have been developed.”
Lack of fires has meant that a lot of rare and endangered
plants, like the smooth coneflower, that require high sunlight
or soil disturbance, are now growing by roadsides and under
power-lines, she said.
Alley and other UGA researchers are closemouthed about the
smooth coneflowers’ exact locations in the wild. It, like other
echinacea species, has been wild gathered – collected for both
medicinal purposes and as a striking garden wildflower – for
years, which is another reason this species is
endangered.
Many species of Echinacea, all native to the U.S., have been
used for centuries for medicinal purposes, first by Native
Americans and later by European settlers.
“At the turn of the century it was a very common tincture,”
Alley said. “It’s value as an immunostimulant is well
documented. It has been widely cultivated and used in Europe
since the 1930s.”
The petals of the smooth coneflower are droopier, longer and
thinner than common varieties and they are pale pink. The plant
itself is taller and more gangly than its cousins, so it
doesn’t have quite the same garden potential, Alley said.
While the remaining wild sites of the smooth coneflower are
best left undisturbed, it can be seen growing in both the
Georgia State Botanical Garden in Athens and at Calloway
Gardens in Pine Mountain.
(Cat Holmes is a news editor with the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
