430 COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 



sheep feed freely on the dried herbage without apparent harm. 

 (Fig. 299.) 



Means of control 



Herding the animals away from localities where the plants are 

 abundant, during the noxious season of green leafage and bloom, 

 seems to be the only practicable plan under existing conditions. 

 But it would seem that so tremendous an injury to so important 

 an industry should be a matter of interest to the entire com- 

 munity, better met by concerted communal action than by in- 

 dividual effort, and that yearly a large portion of the land cursed 

 by such deadly herbage might be redeemed from it, supplanting 

 its bane with wholesome growth, if merely salt-bushes. 



NEW ENGLAND ASTER 



Aster novce-dnglice, L. 



Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds. 



Time of bloom: August to October. 



Seed-time: September to November. 



Range : Quebec to the Northwest Territory, southward to the Caro- 



linas, Alabama, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado. 

 Habitat: Moist soil; fields, meadows, roadsides, waste places. 



One of the handsomest of its family, cultivated in Europe for 

 its beauty, escaped, and locally naturalized there. In spite of its 

 name the plant is more common in the meadows and thickets of 

 the Middle Western States than in New England. 



Stem two to eight feet tall, branching at the top, and the branch- 

 lets glandular-viscid, rather stout, erect, often of a reddish color 

 and covered with fine, bristly hairs. Leaves alternate, lance- 

 shaped, deep green, entire, acute, rather thin, softly hairy, clasping 

 the stem by an auriculate base. Heads numerous, clustered at 

 the summit of stem and branches ; each nearly two inches broad, 

 with orange-yellow disk changing to reddish brown with age, and 

 forty to sixty long, narrow rays, which are usually deep violet- 

 purple, rarely white, occasionally red or pink ; as in all the asters 

 the rays are pistillate and fertile, the disk-florets perfect ; bracts 



