You may recognize it by its common name,"Purple Cone Flower". I take it as a tea at the first sign of a cold and it works. If I wait a day or two I'm out of luck.
I take it as a tea at the first sign of a cold and it works Note that the study used pills.
On Fox News last night, the talking head said using echinacea in other forms, such as in a tea like you use, may have cold-fighting properties (but you already knew that!)
Several years ago, I became interested in herbal medicine. I'd picked up a book on old Indian remedies and it listed Echinacea as a blood purifier and was used for snakebites. This interested me because we'd lost a few dogs to copperheads and cottonmouths. I dug up some of the fresh root I found on our property, dried it and put it away. Not long afterward, one of my dogs was bitten by a cottonmouth, so I treated him with the tea (50cc every 3hrs) and irrigated the wound with it, just as often. In 24hrs, his neck glands had totally returned to normal. I've done this many times since....and have never lost another dog to snakebite.
As far as it working on a cold, I would think you'd have to use the tea made from the root, to be the most effective. I've been told that you aren't to take it more than 10 days at a time, so your body doesn't build a resistance to it. I haven't had a cold in several years... but it does seems to help me shorten a bout of flu to about 2 days.
I have to give as much credibility to this study as I would the one about second-hand smoke. *chuckle*