_Aster_
Evolution teaches us that thistles, daisies, sunflowers, asters, and all
the triumphant horde of composites were once very different flowers from
what we see to-day. Through ages of natural selection of the fittest
among their ancestral types, having finally arrived at the most
successful adaptation of their various parts to their surroundings in
the whole floral kingdom, they are now overrunning the earth. Doubtless
the aster’s remote ancestors were simple green leaves around the vital
organs, and depended upon the wind, as the grasses do--a most
extravagant method--to transfer their pollen. Then some rudimentary
flower changed its outer row of stamens into petals, which gradually
took on color to attract insects and insure a more economical method of
transfer. Gardeners to-day take advantage of a blossom’s natural
tendency to change stamens into petals when they wish to produce double
flowers. As flowers and insects developed side by side, and there came
to be a better and better understanding between them of each other’s
requirements, mutual adaptation followed. The flower that offered the
best advertisement, as the composites do, by its showy rays; that
secreted nectar in tubular flowers where no useless insect could pilfer
it; that fastened its stamens to the inside wall of the tube where they
must dust with pollen the underside of every insect, unwittingly
cross-fertilizing the blossom as he crawled over it; that massed a great
number of these tubular florets together where insects might readily
discover them and feast with the least possible loss of time--this
flower became the winner in life’s race. Small wonder that our June
fields are white with daisies and the autumn landscape is glorified with
golden-rod and asters!
Since North America boasts the greater part of the two hundred and fifty
asters named by scientists, and as variations in many of our common
species frequently occur, the tyro need expect no easy task in
identifying every one he meets afield. However, the following are
possible acquaintances to every one:
In dry, shady places the Large, or Broad-leaved Aster (_A.
macrophyllus_), so called from its three or four conspicuous,
heart-shaped leaves on long petioles, in a clump next the ground, may be
more easily identified by these than by the pale lavender or violet
flower-heads of about sixteen rays each which crown its reddish angular
stem in August and September. The disk turns reddish brown.
Much more branched and bushy is the Common Blue, Branching, Wood, or
Heart-leaved Aster (_A. cordifolius_), whose generous masses of small,
pale lavender flower-heads look like a mist hanging from one to five
feet above the earth in and about the woods and shady roadsides from
September even to December in favored places.
By no means tardy, the Late Purple Aster, so-called, or Purple Daisy
(_A. patens_), begins to display its purplish-blue, daisy-like
flower-heads early in August, and farther north may be found in dry,
exposed places only until October. Rarely the solitary flowers, that
are an inch across or more, are a deep, rich violet. The twenty to
thirty rays which surround the disk, curling inward to dry, expose the
vase-shaped, green, shingled cups that terminate each little branch.
The thick, somewhat rigid, oblong leaves, tapering at the tip, broaden
at the base to clasp the rough, slender stalk. Range similar to the
next species.
Certainly from Massachusetts, northern New York, and Minnesota southward
to the Gulf of Mexico one may expect to find the New England Aster or
Starwort (_A. novae-angliae_), one of the most striking and widely
distributed of the tribe, in spite of its local name. It is not unknown
in Canada. The branching clusters of violet or magenta-purple
flower-heads, from one to two inches across--composites containing as
many as forty to fifty purple ray florets around a multitude of perfect
five-lobed, tubular, yellow disk florets in a sticky cup--shine out with
royal splendor above the swamps, moist fields, and roadsides from August
to October. The stout, bristle-hairy stem bears a quantity of alternate
lance-shaped leaves lobed at the base where they clasp it.
In even wetter ground we find the Red-stalked, Purple-stemmed, or Early
Purple Aster, Cocash, Swanweed, or Meadow Scabish (_A. puniceus_)
blooming as early as July or as late as November. Its stout, rigid
stem, bristling with rigid hairs, may reach a height of eight feet to
display the branching clusters of pale violet or lavender flowers. The
long, blade-like leaves, usually very rough above and hairy along the
midrib beneath, are seated on the stem.
The lovely Smooth or Blue Aster (_A. laevis_), whose sky-blue or violet
flower-heads, about one inch broad, are common through September and
October in dry soil and open woods, has strongly clasping, oblong,
tapering leaves, rough margined, but rarely with a saw-tooth, toward the
top of the stem, while those low down on it gradually narrow into
clasping wings.
In dry, sandy soil, mostly near the coast, from Massachusetts to
Delaware, grows one of the loveliest of all this beautiful clan, the
Low, Showy, or Seaside Purple Aster (_A. spectabilis_). The stiff,
usually unbranched stem does its best in attaining a height of two feet.
Above, the leaves are blade-like or narrowly oblong, seated on the stem,
whereas the tapering, oval basal leaves are furnished with long
footstems, as is customary with most asters. The handsome, bright,
violet-purple flower-heads, measuring about an inch and a half across,
have from fifteen to thirty rays, or only about half as many as the
familiar New England aster. Season: August to November.