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Handbook of Nature-Study 



THE ASTERS 

 Teacher's Story 



ET us believe that the scientist who gave to the 

 asters their Latin name was inspired. Aster 

 means star and these, of all flowers, are most 

 starlike; and in beautiful constellations they 

 border our fields and woodsides. The aster 

 combination of colors is often exquisite. Many 

 have the rays or banners lavender, oar-shaped 

 and set like the rays of a star around the yellow 

 disk-flowers; these latter send out long, yellow 

 anther tubes, overflowing with yellow pollen, 

 and add to the stellar appearance of the flower- 

 head. 



"And asters by the brookside make asters in the brook. 



Thus sang H. H. of these beautiful masses of autumn flowers. But if 

 H. H. had attempted to distinguish the species, she would have said 

 rather that asters by the brookside make more asters in the book; for 

 Gray's Manual assures us that we have 77 species including widely differ- 

 ent forms, varying in size, color and also as to the environment in which 

 they will grow. They range from the shiftless woodland species, which 

 has a few whitish ray-flowers hanging shabbily about its yellow disk and 

 with great, coarse leaves on long, gawky petioles climbing the zigzag stem, 

 to the beautiful and dignified New England aster, which brings the 

 glorious purple and orange of its great flower-heads to decorate our hills 

 in September and October. 



Luckily, there are a few species which are fairly well marked, and still 

 more luckily, it is not of any consequence whether we know the species or 

 not, so far as our enjoyment of the flowers themselves is concerned. The 

 outline of this lesson will call the attention of the pupils to the chief points 

 of difference and likeness in the aster species, and they will thus learn to 

 discriminate in a general way. The asters, like the goldenrods, begin to 

 bloom at the tip of the branches, the flower-heads nearest the central 

 stem, blooming last. All of the asters are very sensitive, and the flower- 

 heads will close promptly as soon as they are gathered. The ray or 

 banner-flowers are pistillate, and therefore develop seed. The seed has 



/, an aster flower-head enlarged; 2, a disk-flower; 3, a banner-flower. 



