ASTER SIXKTMEN8IS. 169 



ASTER S IKK I MEN SIS. 



Sikfo'm Starwort. 

 Linnean Class — Syngenesia. Order — Supehflua. Natural Order — Compositace;e. 



Among the ornamental plants contributed to our gardens by this vast Natural 

 family there are not a few whose claims to attention are founded less on the size 

 or splendour of their individual blossoms than on their collective effect and the neat- 

 ness of their growth and appearance. Of this number is the Aster Sikkimenm ; we 

 can hardly, with propriety, term it a brilliant plant, but it recommends itself by 

 the breadth of colour presented by its compact corymb of flowers, by its com- 

 paratively dwarf habit, and the early season at which it blooms. 



It is a herbaceous perennial, growing about three feet high, with erect, rather 

 robust stems, tinged with reddish purple, and much branched near the summit. 

 The leaves are of a narrow lanceolate form, sessile pointed, spinosely toothed, and 

 occasionally stained with purple at the tip and margins. The flowers are nume- 

 rously produced in close corymbs, each flower-head being about three-quarters 

 of an inch in diameter, with the disk of a clear yellow, tinged occasionally with 

 red, and the ray of a blueish purple. It blooms in June and July, and the popular 

 name of Michaelmas Daisy, applied to some of the plants of this genus, is therefore 

 in this case inappropriate. If late flowers were desired, we have no doubt, if 

 the first shoots were removed in spring and abundance of moisture supplied, 

 that others would be produced which would bloom in autumn, and the same 

 expedient may be successfully resorted to in the case of hundreds of herbaceous 

 plants. Its culture is of the simplest character in ordinary garden soil, or in 

 a mixture of sandy loam and peat or leaf-mould, and it may be increased by 

 division of the tufts, or by seeds which ripen freely. As its name implies, it is 

 a native of the Sikkim Himalayan, at an elevation of ten to twelve thousand 

 feet, whence it was introduced to the Kew Gardens a few years since. It may 

 now be procured of all the leading Florists at a cheap rate. The shrubby 

 stems of this plant have a pleasant fragrance. Our figure represents but a very 

 small portion of the large corymb of flowers. 



The botanical features of the genus Aster are an involucre composed of 

 seveial rows of imbricated scales, the lower ones somewhat scattered; a naked 

 receptacle ; and a fruit crowned with several rows of pappus or bristle-like 

 hairs of a simple character, that is, devoid of teeth or ramifications. Our artist 

 has depicted one of the tubular florets of the disk or central portion of the 



