I have to agree. I have two Harvest Moons. One is still only about 4" tall. The other one has three blooms. Two are quilled and one has no petals at all. I have these planted in a bed with Ruby Stars. The Ruby Stars have been there forever and I have never had a problem. Last year I put in the Harvest Moons, and this year, none of my Ruby Stars have petals on the flowers. My Ruby Stars in other parts of my garden are fine. Someone needs to give us some answers!

I went by Home Depot today to look at their coneflowers they have on sale. What I saw really makes me think something is terribly wrong with the tissue culture process in Echinacea Plants...

Ruby Star: Only one plant looks like the picture. All the rest had pale pink blooms with white towards the center. I did like the plants with the white, but can you believe they are calling these Ruby Star? Their tissue culture is clearly not working properly with this plant. Someone asked about Ruby Star just yesterday. I had no idea this plant was this bad. It's not in the Big Sky Series, but this plant should be recalled. It is not stable in tissue culture obviously.

Sundown: I'm telling you these plants for sale are diseased. Some of the plants have petals missing and some are distorted. I believe these plants are infected with something. I found one plant that didn't have the same color orange blooms. They were paler. This is obviously something wrong in tissue culture but for blooms to have petals missing and not uniform something has to be wrong with these plants.

They also had one other variety but the blooms weren't open.

I'd suggest buying plants with more than one bloom open. This way you can make sure both have the same color and not distorted petals, but I swear these tissue cultured plants can develop problems I've never seen with the normally propagated plants. We really should all be more careful with what we plant in our gardens. I hate to be someone's guinea pig and end up paying them to test their mutants.

I will not be buying any more of the hybrid coneflowers for awhile. I coughed up $17 for my Ruby Star = STRESS, now I'm waiting to see if it will bloom properly = STRESS, next I wait and see if it comes back next Spring = STRESS, and if it does, will it be funky? = STRESS!!! Nope, my gardens are supposed to be a source of STRESS RELIEF... No more Stressful Coneflowers for Me!!

Kathy (tasymo), I couldn't agree with you more. I've been so stressed about these expensive plants. It's sad to pay that much for something and have to trash it because it's not normal. I'm starting to think someone should start a class action lawsuit against the Big Sky Series especially.

I planted Echinacea 'Summer Sky' last fall, and this year the leaves have emerged all twisty and mutilated looking. There may be something wrong with these plants in general, because my 'Orange Meadowbrite' and all my "ordinary" (E. purpurea and E. paradoxa) plants look fine.

Lisa

After reading this thread, and several others about the reliability of the Big Sky Echinaceas, I decided to email them directly to hear their side of the story. This is the response I received:

Thanks for your email. We are aware that there are some problems and we are working diligently to find the cause. The original plants that were tissue cultured were tested for virus and for phytoplasm before culturing. We have also tested samples directly out of the labs that produce the Big Sky echinacea for both of these issues, as well as mature plants. All samples have consistently tested clean.

We have had cultures from our lab tested for pathogenic fungus and bacteria by the best testing labs in the country - to no avail- they did not find anything.

Truthfully, we do not understand the cause for the quilling of the petals or the reason some plants do not come back in the spring. We continually search for a way to increase the quality of our plants.

Karen Stever
ItSaul Plants
toll free 888 448 7285
local 678 297 7823
fax 678 297 7825

I'm surprised they are admitting the problem. Now...when do they send our replacement plants or refund our money?

I wonder if all the magazines that promoted and pushed these untested plants will ever report on their poor performance in gardens!

echinaceamaniac - I get a gardening magazine that is for retailers only. Just this past winter, they had a blurb on the newest Big Skies and how great they are. Unfortunately, they do not have an opinions page in their magazine, or they would get my two cents worth on these plants! I did write to the editor but never heard a word back.

Hey echinaceamaniac- there was a thread started a few years ago I just remembered about Big Sky coneflowers and the Meadowbrite series. It got like 150 posts. I thought you might be interested in it, so im going to try to bump it up for you. :-)
CMK

Thanks kowalleka and christinmk.

Could someone start a lawsuit over these plants? I'm worried that they are spreading disease to my other plants. Some of my other plants have some quilled petals just like the Big Sky plants. This has NEVER happened before. I think it's a disease.

Does anyone know a good lawyer? I want a class action lawsuit. I think the nurseries that are having to refund money, etc. should sue as well. These plants have a disease or something genetically wrong. I would bet everything I have on it!

Wait till you see the photos I took today at Home Depot. Sundown Echinacea has the same quilled problem that Sunset had before it was discontinued and I documented it. The percentage of plants with quilled petals is almost 100%. Is there a plant investigative reporter? LOL.