Phlox paniculata.

Welllllllllllll,i was walking along, minding my own business,when i heard a calling from way over in the garden center,it seemed every one was in another world or something,no one was hearing this call but me,now,you all know,you would do the same thing, you would have to go and check it out,would you not? At first i could not find where it was coming from,(they moved the seed rack)oh,um, i mean,i had to go down several isles to find this calling,when all of a sudden,there they were,Beautiful Seeds,yes, this is what was calling me,i really tryed to resist,because i just received my package from Patty last week,but no,the call was to great,i was fighiting it with all my power,Off jumped the pack of Organic Lettuce,pulling behind it a pack of Red Blush Onion,then another,Garlic chives grabed ahold of White Lisbon Bunching onion,flying into my cart,seeds of all kinds,Pepper dill,nasturtium,cosmos,,i had no control,when a sales lady comes over and askes me if i am fnding every thing alright,well, i was a wreck,looked like a crazed lady,the spell was broken, i straightened my jacket,stood up straight,smoothed back my hair,and proceed to the check out.Has this ever happened to you?It was amazing really. I came home and spilled my bounty on the table and it calmed me down just looking at them all. Funny thing is, i forgot to buy groceries,Oh No,another trip! cAROL

Some of them (like Sunset, Sunrise and Sundown) have some quilled petals and some do not, I don't know if it's a genetic thing or something that happens in the tissue culture in some labs, I've seen pictures of the same variety with and without quilled petals. That being said there are some varieties that are supposed to have quilled petals like "All That Jazz". I have a couple of the Big Sky coneflowers with a few quilled petals too but they are good strong growers so will keep them around until I find ones to replace them. There was a very heated thread going about this problem on the Perennial Forum it was getting to be a little much. A lot depends on what our own particular growing conditions are as to how well these new varieties will do for each of us, what one person can grow another can't, even if we're in the zones the plant tag says will work. My "Harvest Moon" hasn't bloomed yet but it did come back for me after a very harsh winter. If you are like me and have to have these new varieties we just have to take our chances they will grow well for us, if not it would be best to wait a year or two until they have been proven to be a good one for your area. Here is a link that might be useful: All That Jazz

my echinacea (and some of my rudbeckia) also looked very strange this season. I researched aster yellows deeply and then looked at my plants. although there was some malformed flowers and stems, they didn't look anywhere near as bad as the photos of aster yellows that I saw. I had the same syptoms that you had - the weird colored dark stems and pre-flowers. little tiny buds that came up and never turned into flowers. flowers and stems and bracts all mixed up in a weird looking flower thing. flowers with tumors growing from them. some of the plants were strangely tall and coarse. however some of the flowers on these same plants were 100% fine. so, I decided over the course of the season to let my plants come up in spring and see what happens. maybe it was the weird (really really wet) weather we had this spring. maybe it was a bug of some kind that is prevalent in really really wet weather. however, if they come up malformed again in spring, I will just assume that they are infected with aster yellows and dispose of them. I hate to do it, but it is a very easily transmitted viral disease (vector insect is the aster leafhopper) and incurable. one of the things to look for in aster yellows is something called a 'witches broom'. if I see this in spring I will decide for sure it's aster yellows. aster yellows can infect an entire garden, necessitating disposing of all plants showing symptoms. I don't want to go there. rudbeckia, monardo, phlox, echinacea, and many other species are susceptible to aster yellows. Good luck. Laura Here is a link that might be useful: Yellows Diseases of Echinacea, Monarda and Caraway