any clue what this is

6 Aug '06 2:36 pm

hi all....i am new to the forum and i am hoping you can help me. i have been admiring this flowering plant at a house in upstate ny for years and finally found some of it growing in a park so i snagged it. i am not sure what it is but it looks thistle like. before it blooms it looks like this:

it then blooms purplish blue and looks like this

i am hoping the brownish parts are seeds....that is the one i took.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

randi

7 Aug '06 4:23 pm

It's a perennial called Echinops, and you'll get good plants growing from seed. It's related to thistles. When my son started taking photographs of my garden he thought it was a weed, and duly ignored it! I love them, but I find they are short lived (2, maybe 3 years) and sometimes the crowns sort of rot away! oops!