Rabbits at my down to the ground earlier this year.

Did it grow back?

Number one enemy of purple coneflowers is groundhogs.

I can't imagine rabbits being an issue this time of year anymore -- they're typically a pest earlier on with young shoots emerging. My Echinacea are 3-4' in height and about to bloom. Maybe you've got different rabbits out there. ;)

I'd bet on something else -- maybe the groundhogs, but I don't know.

Deer will eat young Echinacea, here anyway. Don't know what side of WA you're on, but on the west side, Mountain Beaver will cut plants at the base and drag them off to their burrows. Mountain Beaver are only found on the west coast. One year when I lived there, I watched a MB clear my yard of a large patch of dandelions(just the greens). It kept coming back until they were gone.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mountain Beaver info

Rabbits have almost entirely consumed my Echinicaea 'Magnus', while in bloom. There are only two stems with flowers, remaining to be eaten.
Normally, they don't hop up onto any Echinacea potted up in clay pots, but I've seen them actually do it on occasion.
They did so, until that one was nothing but stubs & it never re-grew...
I've heard that some people resort to misting the leaves of susceptible (& particularly the expensive) plants with hot sauce, to deter them.

I got a chuckle when I saw the heading on this thread. It reminded me of a mystery I had with my coneflowers about 5 years ago. Mine were in the front of my house and they were budding up. I was watching them every day waiting for the first one to open. I started finding buds missing. The plant would start producing more buds to make up for it and as they would get bigger and taller, they would suddenly go missing. I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what was happening to it and it suddenly occurred to me that it could be human. I tried to think of everyone who had come to the house and the buds were missing daily. I think I was finding them lying on the ground. I had an AHA moment one day, that the only person visiting us daily, was the mailman.

He was coming early in the morning, so the next day I got up early and waited for him to arrive. I watched the truck pull up outside and he got out and started walking to the front door and I could see his face close enough to see that he was distracted. His mind was on something else and he absentmindedly, reached out as he passed the coneflowers and flicked a bud off a stem. I was so excited to have solved the mystery! lol I opened the door as he got to it and kidded him about the 16 coneflower buds I was missing. For a minute he didn't know what I was talking about and then it dawned on him. He apologized profusely and we had a huge crop of coneflower that year from all the pruning. [g]

The same thing happened to me last year and I blamed the woodchucks/groundhogs. I don't believe it was deer because the hosta (aka "deer candy") nearby were untouched. We don't have rabbits. So far it hasn't happened this year.

As someone else mentioned above, rabbits will eat these plants at anytime of the year...at least here they do.

The little buggers visit my yard every freaking day and like to eat asters, geraniums, roses and willows as well during the growing season...they are much more destructive in the winter as they basically eat anything except barberry.

My yellow lab helps keeps them at bay to a point but I am researching rifles.

Yep, must be the darn groundhogs if you have them. The exact same thing happened to my lovely "Fragrant Angel" coneflowers.

I think the bunny is the problem! There is a bunny (actually 2 at one time, not sure where the other one went) and I watched in horror as he ate my BIG pea pod plant off at the stem. I thought he was munching leaves, so I was going to share...but NO! He destroyed 3 plants. I wrapped the bottom of the few that were left in big pieces of foil and that seemed to stop him. So I'm assuming he ate the cone flowers. I also found slugs on the leaves, so I baited for slugs. I don't know why they never ate them before, but its been a LONG WET spring in the Pac NW, so there must be more than ever. Thanks every one!

Prairiemoon..did you ever find out why the mailman was nipping off your coneflowers?

I just asked my neighbor about this because I planted 2 coneflowers the other day and all the flowers are missing...the whole flower from about and inch from the top. Now I just have all these bare stems sticking up! She said there are bunnies around eating some of her flowers too. She's out in her garden all day and she sees them.

Maybe her mailman really hates coneflowers. lol

Karen

So interesting to read this thread. I, too, have been having a problem with disappearing coneflowers, and it didn't dawn on me until last night that it could be the bunnies.

There are two that have taken up residence in our gardens. I hadn't seen them eat anything until last night. Husband and I were hanging around in the front yard and we spotted one, so we were being quiet and watching. We saw him (her?) rise up on hind legs and reach up to pull down a stem of Ironweed. Like someone above, I thought the bunny was just going to munch a few leaves, but before I knew it the bunny had a whole stem in her hands. Aha!

I had several Green Jewel coneflowers in another garden, and all mysteriously disappeared this year. The remaining coneflowers in that bed occasionally have broken stems. Sometimes the broken off stem is lying on the ground, sometimes it's nowhere to be found. It's got to be the bunnies!

Yes, someone's been nibbling on my plants. Recently, at first, I thought my coreopsis wasn't growing very quickly, then I notice its growth was reversing. Recently, the cone flower got chewed up.

It is not the mailman, who never gets out of his car when he delivers the mail :-).

My suspicion is the rabbits. I have seen a few in the area, they seemed more likely suspect than the squirrels. My neighbor reported that they have been eating through the barks on his bushes. I have started spraying the flowering plants with repellent.

Paul

I walked out the front door and found my echinacea blossoms shredded on the porch and railing of my porch...Do squirrels eat echinacea? We have black, grey and brown squirrels in our neighborhood...we also have rabbits, but they have never been on the top of the railings of my porch.

With me, I never could collect Echinacea seeds, because the goldfinches would descend in swarms and eat the green seeds before they matured.

mine look cut about mid stem and I find the rest lying on the ground beside the plant. We have many rabbits but not sure what part of the plant they're eating?

Thanks for all the replies, and entertaining stories... especially the one about the mailman! :-) I'd love to know WHY he did that?? For some reason, I didn't get any recent notifications of a reply until today. ;-( I'm sure it was bunnies... we have a lot and they've chosen a few other plants to munch on, too, especially the wild violets, which I have never planted and have tons of, so that's ok. I have lots of echinacea in full bloom, so obviously they didn't destroy much and they may have even grown back. With so much growing, I didn't even notice!

Thanks again!

Maybe the mailman thought the blooms were spent, and he was "deadheading"? Or so he thought.... Very strange lol

Groundhogs do more damage than you can imagine. When we finally caught the one who was chewing our front windowsills (and stopped long enough to pose for a picture) there was also an end to the mysterious chopping down of my daisies a couple of inches off the ground with nothing eaten, just chopped down. Good luck.

In all the answers no one mentioned cutworm. Cutworm will cut off a plant just above the ground and then it feeds on the roots. Dig down where the plant is cut off and see if there's a fat grub. Dig it out and step on it. If it is cutworm he won't have moved far because he'll be dining on your plants roots. Cutworm is always a loner so if you get it you've solved the problem unless the cutworm moth has laid more eggs

I've actually seen a gray squirrel come up to my coneflowers on the deck, bite off an almost dead flower, take it to the railing and turn his back to my house and then work on it for several minutes there. I think it must have been eating the seeds or maybe storing them to bring back to its nest. Also - I have an empty pot out there right next to the coneflowers and now it's got several blackened parts from the coneflower plants in it including some dead blooms. I didn't put them in there!

No! No! No! It's not done by squirrels or rabbits or groundhogs. It's a weevil (the "Sunflower Head-Clipping Weevil). I removed the one below from my purple coneflower and brought it in the house for a picture. I also killed 20 of his friends. What you have to do is walk around your garden and when you see a flower deadheaded 2 inches from the top, put your hand (or cup) underneath the flower and squeeze. These weevils will fall out into your hand or cup, and you can kill them with prejudice. They don't bite. :) You will also see them on top of the flowers and sometimes crawling up the stem. I've manually removed them every few days, and the problem is mostly resolved. I also found more details just now at:

https://bygl.osu.edu/node/816

Good luck!

There's a little black weevil that cuts the stems straight across and leaves it dangling. They lay eggs in the juices of the stem. When they hatch and mature, they travel down to the dangling flower and eat, from what I read. I killed a BUNCH of them this morning. Get a dish with soapy water in it. Take the flower head and flick the weevils off into the water. They can't cling to the sides and save themselves because it's too slippery. Here's how many I got this morning. Probably around 50 of the little b**tards.