The Cook County Board has selected echinacea as the county’s official flower. But if you went back to 1960 you would have a hard time finding an echinacea plant anywhere in the county.
At that time only about 1 percent of Illinois’ prairie remained because of farming and development.
Since then, the Morton Arboretum started a program under the leadership of Ray Schulenberg. The Cook County Forest Preserve District’s Conservation Department, under the direction of Roland Eisenbeis, began restoration of prairie at each of its nature centers.
And a great guy from the Palos-Orland Park area, John Jedlicka, was put in charge of obtaining seeds from prairie remnants and planting them in pieces of forest preserves that had been exhausted farmland.
Echinacea is now seen only in many restored prairie remnants and at all of Cook County’s nature centers. It has become a favored garden plant. If it were not for Jedlicka, some other plant would be our county’s flower.
