ASTER SPECIES. 
A. tenuifolius, from the salt-marshes of Massachusetts, has per- 
fectly smooth stems and leaves; the stem goes zigzagging this way 
and that, attaining perhaps to 2 feet of height, or to 4 inches. The 
leaves are long and fleshy and quite untoothed at the edge, while the 
flowers, though fine and large, are of a pale purple. 
A. Thompsonit is one of the most beautiful of all—an Indian species, 
coming to us from the highlands of Nepal and Kashmir. It is a 
frail and slight grower, deplorably difficult of increase, as it neither 
seeds nor runs norformsaclump. The leafy stems rise to some 3 feet, 
set thickly with their oval-pointed toothed, roughly hairy, green-grey 
foliage ; the flowers are borne separately, in summer, and are very 
large and graceful, of a clear lilac-blue. It should have good soil, 
well drained, and in the sun. There is also a lower-growing form, 
called in lists A. T. nana, yet more especially fitted for the rock- 
garden. 
A. Tradescantii, from low grounds, is from half a foot to 3 feet 
high, with slender panicles of pale purple blossoms, flattened with that 
grey tone which “ pale purple ” so often connotes in Aster. These wild 
species, however, have their place, where this colour is no drawback. 
Let them be turned out into rough ground of heath and grass and 
sedge, then their sad pale orbs take a strangely delicate and tragic 
beauty, shining clear and pale with a still and cool lucidity in the dim 
and dying herbage. And so may be seen at Wisley. 
A. turbinellus, however, keeps its grace and astonishing delicacy 
of beauty high among modern rivals in the border—a tall and quite 
spiderly elegant plant with large purple flowers on very long sprays, 
waving this way and that from the wiry, narrow-leaved and bare- 
looking branches. 
A. umbellatus is more than a six-footer, excessively leafy, with 
flat heads of many whitish flowers. 
A. undulatus is another weedy gawk of no use. 
A. Vahlii should be a precious rarity, and comes from the Antarctic 
Islands ; it cannot be the worthless thing sent out under these names, 
one hopes, for in that case it is a pity it ever took the trouble to come 
so far—a densely, ineradicably-spreading mass, with ragged spindly 
stars of pallid dull blue in summer, carried on stems of some 18 inches 
high, above the tufts of long narrow smooth foliage. 
A. vimineus is like a six-foot A. dumosus, with lesser flowers, but 
still very attractive in its habit of bending sprays with innumerable 
little daisies. A. v. saxatilis is a dwarfer, neater form. 
A. virgatus has the flowers of A. laevis, but the leaves are narrower, 
the growth more slender, and its whole effect more graceful and neat. 
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