STEELE NEW PLANTS FROM EASTERN UNITED STATES. 373 



the tegule characters, and the smooth stem. The leaf surfaces suggest A. cordifolius. 

 Its smooth willowy stems set it widely apart from any species of the undulatus type. 

 Besides the differences in leaf surface, it is a much more slender plant than A. schis- 

 tosus, with no comparison in size of heads, and is a much lower plant than A. low- 

 rieanus with smaller heads, while it differs from both in its wiry, arcuate stems and 

 heavier tegule tips. 



This is a pretty plant, and, growing as it does in companies, may be named as here 

 in allusion to the choral dance. 



Aster schistosus Steele, sp. nov. 



Spreading by very slender branching rootstocks and forming small colonies; plant 

 when best developed exceeding a meter high, mainly much lower and on dry bluffs 

 sometimes flowering at a height of 15 cm.; stems assurgent, soon nearly erect, some- 

 what flexuous, lightly fluted, glabrous except for a few hairs in the inflorescence; 

 leaves of the sterile tufts and some of the lower stem leaves with an ovate or some- 

 times oblong-ovate, moderately cordate blade on a margined petiole exceeding its 

 own length; following leaves with the blade scarcely or not at all cordate, ovate, or 

 ovate-oblong to ovate-lanceolate, sharply acuminate, the petiole in large specimens 

 rather long and narrowly winged, widening toward the base or more often toward the 

 blade, at length giving way to a broadly cuneate or oblong petiolar segment, this 

 change in dwarf specimens taking place very promptly; margin of the blade serrate 

 in the middle with appressed or sometimes slightly salient teeth; all the leaves rather 

 thick, or when large thinner, not very firm, glabrous except the hispidulous margin; 

 dull green above, beneath paler, pinnately veined, densely reticulate with dark 

 lines, these in the dry plant obvious also above; inflorescence in large specimens 

 ample, pyramidal or dome-shaped, the axis percurrent, zigzag, the branches mostly 

 straight, the longer floriferous only on the outer half, the shorter for their whole length; 

 branehlets mainly 1 to 2.5 cm. long, usually with a single developed head, but not 

 seldom with minute abortive lateral heads, bearing several minute, subulate brac- 

 teoles; heads few or moderately numerous, 8 to 9 mm. high, the involucre broadly 

 campanulate; tegules strict, of about 6 lengths, the lower oblong, the upper linear, 

 the tip deltoid, scarcely thickened, the back white with a green line expanded above 

 into a rhombus terminating with the tegule; rays 12 or 15, linear-spatulate, 8 or 9 

 mm. long, deep blue; achenes glabrous. 



Type in the U. S. National Herbarium, no. 494524, collected at Millboro, Bath 

 County, Virginia, September 17, 1907, by E. S. Steele. Six other specimens of this 

 date were preserved, besides 10 of September 15, 1907, and 8 of September 16, 1906. 

 All were from the region at the west end of the railroad tunnel. 



The leaf form of this plant suggests affinity with Aster prenanthoides and A. tardi- 

 fiorus, especially the latter, on account of the lack in both of a basal dilation of the 

 petiole. The strict involucre, however, and the nonacuminate, diamond-marked 

 tegules exclude it from this group and point unmistakably to relation with A. lourie- 

 anus and its allies, with which also the leaves well accord. The middle stem leaves 

 greatly resemble those of A. lowrieanus lanceolatus. Comparing with what seems to be 

 the typical form of lowrieanus, viz, a rather low plant with ample broad, conspicuously 

 cordate leaves, A. schistosus is stouter and stiffer with much drier, much smaller, and 

 much less conspicuously cordate leaves and somewhat larger heads. The subspecies 

 of A. lowrieanus are so much more tall and slender with so much smaller heads that in 

 spite of the resemblance in leaf form mentioned above the relation is externally not at 

 all close. No form of A. lowrieanus, as far as known, has a colony-making system of 

 rootstocks. In A. schistosus this feature is quite noteworthy, notwithstanding the 

 fact that the groups are small, only 5 flowering steins having been traced by me as 

 belonging to the same system. The rootstocks are very slender and thread their way 

 through the shale gravel of dry hi 11b instead of the moist humus or mud of low meadows 



