2 November 2009

Aster ID

Asters spending ray petals...

...like ribbon curls.

Come autumn, aster and goldenrod ID still march me back to my field guides.

My best on this one? Purple-stemmed or swamp aster Symphyotrichum puniceum. var. puniceus, a wonderfully common native species.

For online aster ID, try Walter Muma’s Learning Asters in Ontario.

5 comments:

Steve S said...

Maybe purple stemmed if it's a swamp but looks more like panicled.

native plant girl said...

hey steve! how are you? missed you. :)

panciled eh? i dunno there cowboy. ;)

hey, for kicks i just emailed Paul Heydon to come over here and straighten us out :P

btw: y'know what he told me about you??

That he likes your plantings because when he's in them, he can't tell he's in a restoration! :)

Steve S said...

That's a great compliment. I'll have to thank him. Missed you too.

Panicled has red stems and white flowers and narrow leaves like htis one. Purple stemmed (swamp) has mauve flowers (occ. white but rare) and wider leaves. I've seen panicles still in flower this week, New Englands are mostly gone, heaths are gone, big-leaved are gone. I have a heart-leaved in full flower in my yard that's beautiful still.

native plant girl said...

Hey Steve :)

So Paul says "the aster is swamp aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum)."

I'll take him as an authority on these things. :)

Thanks for weighing in. Makes me feel better, and helped prove the point too: Asters (and goldenrods, not to mention willows and hawthorns) are subtle for most folks, even in the native plant crowd. The Field Botanists of Ontario can still fill up aster & goldenrod ID workshops in the fall, with, well, botanists. :)

Steve S said...

Pictures were a bit too close to be sure of the leaves. I'm wrong. I'll go with Paul's ID any day.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.