Echinacea:The art of tincturing

Enlarge Image Image Gallery photos by Susan Belsinger and Tina Marie Wilcox

We cultivate the echinaceas because they are handsome perennial-flowering plants that add height and color to our gardens and show off their splendid coneheads throughout the summer and into the fall. Butterflies and birds are attracted to these pink, purple, pale lavender, white, and yellow coneflowers. After the flowering season, when the plants go dormant in the colder weather, we reap the health benefits of echinacea by harvesting the roots and making our own tinctures. This is not difficult to do, and it is both rewarding and fulfilling work. We feel that making tinctures from our own organically grown plants is the best medicine possible.

Health benefits

Echinacea has been used medicinally for centuries by Native Americans to combat many ailments. Echinacea stimulates the immune system and its antiviral activities help fight colds and flu, as well as promote the healing of infections.

Our personal experience over many years of using the tincture has been that echinacea keeps us healthier; we find it helps us to avoid colds and flu, that it decreases the duration and severity of these symptoms, and it helps our bodies fight infections. We take echinacea tincture during the cold and flu season, at the first signs of a cold, or when we are fighting an infection, and especially when we travel and are around large groups of people. We also apply the tincture topically to inflammations such as hangnails, bug bites, and toothaches.

Persons with impaired immune systems should avoid using immunostimulants. Also, because echinacea is a member of the aster/daisy family (which ragweed is a relative), some individuals may be allergic to it.

Cultivating echinacea

Of the nine species of echinacea, we tincture Echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower) and E. pallida (pale purple coneflower). Closely related to E. pallida and also known as pale purple coneflower is E. simulata, which would be an easy third choice for herb gardeners in the regions of the Ozark Mountains (to which it is endemic). E. paradoxa (yellow coneflower) is simply too rare and beautiful to dig up and tincture. E. angustifolia (narrow-leaved purple coneflower) is native to dry prairies and struggles in areas with high humidity. E. tennesseensis (Tennessee purple coneflower) and E. laevigata (smooth coneflower) are listed on the federal endangered species list. Other rare species include E. atrorubens, which grows in eastern Kansas and Oklahoma, and E. sanguinea, which is found in Louisiana and eastern Texas, with one population in southwestern Arkansas.