Echinacea, a purple-petaled perennial with cone-shaped flower heads, does double duty in our garden. Not only does this 3-foot plant display daisy-like 3-inch flowers that bloom reliably for eight weeks during summer, it's also part of our edible landscape.

I don't exactly eat it, though. Instead, and at the first sign of a cold, I drink a hot tea brewed from blending the dried leaves, flowers and seeds of Echinacea purpurea. Echinacea is also known as the "purple cone flower" and the consensus among medical researchers is that echinacea can reduce the severity of cold symptoms if it's taken when cold symptoms first develop.

Just make certain to consult your physician prior to taking this or any other medications.

A medicinal plant

Native Americans first discovered this plant has medicinal properties, and the people of the Great Plains in particular used it regularly as a multipurpose cure.

Echinacea is the Greek word for "hedgehog" (porcupine), and the name was chosen, no doubt, to reference the plant's prickly bracts, which occupy a defensive position just below the flower heads.

Then again, Aesop, the famed storyteller of ancient Greece, once wrote a fable that might also explain how Echinacea received its hedgehog-affiliated name.

'The Fox and the Hedgehog'

Aesop's fable, entitled "The Fox and the Hedgehog," is about how a hedgehog offers to help rescue a fox from a swarm of hungry flies.

Hedgehog spikes, I suppose, can repel nearly anything, including flies.

But the fox refused the hedgehog's help, fox reasoning that the flies had nearly filled their bellies and were about to leave.

This was certainly the wrong decision, since flies breed where they feed, and ancient Greeks reading this fable would have associated the flies with filth.

They would have also assumed that the flies would leave maggots or some sort of sickness behind to finish off the fox.

So besides having prickly, hedgehog-like bracts that protect echinacea's flower petals from predators, I wonder if Echinacea's namer was aware of Aesop's fable, too.

Easy to grow

A member of the aster family, echinacea is a drought-tolerant and deer-resistant plant that can be started from seeds sown during spring. You could also start it now by transplanting potted plants. Just make certain the soil drains freely, and the plants receive full sun.

This week in the garden

As lawn grasses begin to turn brown, weeds become more visible. This is an ideal time, then, to locate lawn weeds and to treat them with lawn-weed herbicides, after reading and following the product's directions, of course.

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