300 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Houghton's Goldenrod 



Solidago houghtonii Torrey & Gray 



Plate 239a 



Stems slender, smooth below, sometimes slightly hairy above, 8 to 24 

 inches high. Leaves linear, the basal and lower ones pctioled, 4 to 5 inches 

 long, one-sixth to one-third of an inch wide, three-nerved and entire, the 

 sessile stem leaves becoming successively smaller upward, the uppermost 

 leaves small and bractlike. Heads of flowers about one-fourth of an inch 

 high, few, forming a small corymbose cyme, each head with twenty to thirty 

 flowers; involucre broadly campanulate, its bracts oblong and blunt. 



In swamps and bogs, north shore of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, 

 and in Bergen swamp, Genesee county. New York. Flowering in August 

 and September. 



THE ASTERS 



Aster 

 The Wild Asters comprise a genus of over two hundred and fifty species, 

 of which nearly fifty species occur in New York State. They are mostly 

 perennial, branching herbs with alternate, simple leaves and corymbose 

 or paniculate heads of both tubular and radiate flowers. Involucre varying 

 from hemispheric to campanulate or turbinate, with its bracts overlapping 

 in several series, the outer ones usually shorter and smaller. Ray flowers 

 white, pink, purple, blue or violet, pistillate. Disk flowers perfect, tubular, 

 their corollas five-lobed, usually yellow and changing to red, brown or 

 purple; pappus bristles slender, numerous, rough or minutely toothed, 

 usually in one, sometimes in two series; achencs mostly flattened and nerved. 



Key to the New York Species of Aster 



.4 Basal and lower leaves, or some of them, cordate and slender petioled 



Stem leaves, or some of them, cordate-clasping; plant rough when dr>- 



I A. u n d u 1 a t u s 

 None of the stem leaves cordate-clasping; rays white, violet or rose 



Rays white or rarely rose, usually two-toothed; plants not glaiidular 



