ASTER. 
species from the high Alps of America, in the style of A. alpinus, 
with large glories of violet and gold, carried solitary on their short 
stems. 
A. apricus, from the highest Alps of Wyoming, is another plant 
that offers us joy, being only some 4 inches high, and forming a fine 
tuft of oblong spoon-shaped leaves, thick and ample, whose stalks are 
winged at the base; the stems are rather few, erect or weak, about 
4 inches high, each carrying a noble blossom whose rays are blended 
with purple and red in a manner characteristic and sumptuous. 
A. brachytrichus, though meeker and milder, deserves a place in the 
gallery of charm. It forms a compact tuft, very free in producing its 
single-flowered stems, about a foot or 9 inches high, which are set with 
rather narrow foliage. Narrow, too, are the rays of the blossoms, and 
of a soft, rather than striking, pale lilac. (Alps of Asia.) 
A. campestris, which ranges through the Rockies from Colorado 
to Montana and Wyoming, is a specially beautiful alpine. It runs 
freely underground, and then sends up erect slender stems usually 
undivided and carrying only one flower, or else branching so as to 
produce several. These stems are stickyish with glands above, and 
purplish in colour, the leaves being rather narrow, sharp, and fringed 
with hair. The flowers are resplendent, some 2 inches across, of a 
lovely dark azure. 
A, catalaunicus, from the mountain-tops of Catalonia, is a dimin- 
ished, creeping A. Amellus with narrower stiff foliage and blossoms of 
half the size. 
A. caucasicus is a foot or two high, with leafy stems each ending in 
a single Amellus-looking flower. 
A. conspicuwus is the finest species of the Central Rockies. It rises 
from 1 to more than 3 feet high, with stiff, saw-toothed veiny leaves, 
and abundant domed clusters of flowers, rich violet, and each about 
an inch and a half across. : 
A. culminis is yet another unknown beauty of a high-alpine 
American Aster in the way of A. alpinus and A. andinus. 
A. diplostephioeides appears in all gardens and catalogues, yet 
seems to be totally unknown in any, the name being everywhere 
assumed by the no less splendid A. subcoeruleus, q.v. A. diploste- 
phioerdes is a stranger from high altitudes up to 16,000 feet in Kashmir 
and Sikkim. Its basal leaves are perfectly smooth at the edge, and 
diminish to a long slender foot-stalk. From the assembled tufts of 
these spring stems of about a foot or more, with a few leaves upon 
their lower part, but none approaching the great flower-head, of which 
the containing green scales are in only one row. The blossom itself 
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