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.
The low-growing BOG ASTER (A.nemoralis), not to be confused with the much taller Red-stalked species often found growing in the same swamp, and having, like it, flower-heads measuring about an inch and a half across, has rays that vary from light violet purple to rose pink.Its oblong to lance-shaped leaves, only two inches long at best, taper to a point at both ends, and are seated on the stem.We look for this aster in sandy bogs from New Jersey northward and westward during August and September.
The STIFF or SAVORY-LEAVED ASTER, SANDPAPER, or PINE STARWORT(Ionactis linariifolius), now separated from the other asters into a genus by itself, is a low, branching little plant with no basal leaves, but some that are very narrow and blade-like, rigid, entire and one-nerved, ascending the stiff stems.The leaves along the branches are minute and awl-shaped, like those on a branch of pine.Only from ten to fifteen violet ray flowers (pistillate) surround the perfect disk florets.From Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico, and westward beyond the Mississippi this prim little shrub grows in tufts on dry or rocky soil, and blooms from July to October.
ROBIN'S, or POOR ROBIN'S, or ROBERT'S PLANTAIN; BLUE SPRINGDAISY; DAISY-LEAVED FLEABANE
(Erigeron pulchellus; E.bellifolium of Gray) Thistle family Flower-heads - Composite, daisy-like, 1 to 1/2 in.across; the outer circle of about 50 pale bluish-violet ray florets; the disk florets greenish yellow.Stem: Simple, erect, hairy, juicy, flexible, from 10 in.to 2 ft.high, producing runners and offsets from base.Leaves: Spatulate, in a flat tuft about the root; stem leaves narrow, more acute, seated, or partly clasping.
Preferred Habitat - Moist ground, hills, banks, grassy fields.
Flowering Season - April-June.
Distribution - United States and Canada, east of the Mississippi.
Like an aster blooming long before its season, Robin's plantain wears a finely cut lavender fringe around a yellow disk of minute florets; but one of the first, not the last, in the long procession of composites has appeared when we see gay companies of these flowers nodding their heads above the grass in the spring breezes as if they were village gossips.
Doubtless it was the necessity for attracting insects which led the Robin's plantain and other composites to group a quantity of minute florets, each one of which was once an independent, detached blossom, into a common head.In union there is strength.
Each floret still contains, however, its own tiny drop of nectar, its own stamens, its own pistil connected with embryonic seed below; therefore, when an insect alights where he can get the greatest amount of nectar for the least effort, and turns round and round to exhaust each nectary, he is sure to dust the pistils with pollen, and so fertilize an entire flower-head in a trice.
The lavender fringe and the hairy involucre and stem serve the end of discouraging crawling insects, which cannot transfer pollen from plant to plant, from pilfering sweets that cannot be properly paid for.Small wonder that, although the composites have attained to their socialistic practices at a comparatively recent day as evolutionists count time, they have become as individuals and as species the most numerous in the world; the thistle family, dominant everywhere, containing not less than ten thousand members.
COMMON or PHILADELPHIA FLEABANE, or SKEVISH (E.Philadelphicus), a smaller edition of Robin's plantain, with a more findely cut fringe, its reddish-purple ray florets often numbering one hundred and fifty, may be found in low fields and woods throughout North America, except in the circumpolar regions.
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