512 



THE THISTLE FAMILY. 



The numerous leaves are oblong-lanceolate and pointed at the apex, and are 

 narrowed at the base into margined petioles, or the upper ones are sessile 

 and partly clasping. They are pale green, usually roughened on both sides 

 and often, as is the smooth stem, tinted with purple. In fruit the plant 

 still shows its colour, for the pappus is sometimes purplish. 



A. ditmosus, rice-button aster, bushy aster, belongs to quite another group 

 of this large order, it having very small and numerous flower-heads which 

 grow at the ends of slender and very leafy branchlets. Of the involucres 

 the scales are membranaceous about their margins and closely imbricated 

 in from three to six rows. The leaves spatulate-lanceolate, or linear, are 

 narrowed at the base, sessile and entire or, rarely, sparingly serrate, while on 

 their margins they are quite rough. Through either dry or moist soil this 

 species is very common and subject to considerable variations, it not unfre- 

 quently occurring in a white form. 



A. ericoides, white heath-aster, frost- weed aster or farewell summer, is in- 

 deed a dainty, late-blooming white one, often stop- 

 ping to greet the month of December and also 

 well known from Florida to Maine. Its very 

 small flower-heads are produced singly at the ends 

 of leafy branchlets, thus forming a spreading ra- 

 ceme, and its stem-leaves are narrowly linear and 

 sessile, while those about the base are spatulate 

 lanceolate and dentate. Often also the stem and 

 branches are quite pubescent. 



A. coficdlor^ lilac-flowered, silky, or silvery aster 

 has an air quite distinctive from that of numerous 

 other asters, and is unusually pretty. Besides the 

 beauty of its large flower-heads, the rays of which 

 are lilac and which grow on ascending, leafy and 

 axillary peduncles in a long narrow raceme, or, oc- 

 casionally, panicle, the leaves have a jaunty ap- 

 pearance. They are oval and sessile, and point 

 upward on the stem. Over them there is on both 

 sides a fine silvery pubescence. Also the reddish 

 stem is usually pubescent with a white wool. Al- 

 though sometimes found to be branched, the stem 

 usually is simple, and so compactly arranged are 

 both leaves and flowers that the plant somewhat suggests one of the blazing 

 stars. It blooms almost as early as the golden asters and often in their 

 neighbourhood. 



A. pdtcjis, late purple aster, or purple daisy, is known from its having 



Aster patens. 



