BIoTIAN SECTION 101 
pressed or fusiform, sometimes terete, either glabrous or slightly 
pubescent. Pappus typically composed of one series of numerous, 
uniform, slender, straight, white bristles, capillary and minutely 
roughened, the inner tips sometimes thickened. 
Section r. BIOTIAN ASTERS 
Cordated strongly surculose colony-forming Asters with broad 
firm coriaceous close-imbricated bracts and non-floriferous corymbose 
inflorescence, chiefly with white or lavender rays and reddened disks. 
ordate-leaved Asters with greatly developed rootstocks of 
strong and persistent vitality, producing large subterraneously 
connected colonies; unlike the other heart-leaved Asters (the 
Heterophyllous and Diversifolial sections), among which the 
rootstocks are diminished in size, robustness and duration of life. 
Rays either white, reddened, purple, violet, or almost blue, some- 
times greenish or yellowish with age, chiefly 6-13, finally droop- 
ing; seldom circinately inrolled as in many other groups. Disk- 
flowers usually 20—30, yellow, soon turning reddish-brown or 
even maroon or crimson, becoming brown in age or sometimes 
yellowish-green or greenish-brown. Involucre somewhat cylin- 
dric, compactly imbricated in 3—5 rows.  Bracts coriaceous (or 
even scarious) close-appressed, short-ovate to linear-acuminate, 
green or pale; with the margins similar (or even white, purpled or 
yellowish), chiefly ciliate, on the back either puberulent, glandular 
or glabrous, not herbaceous at the tip, but usually with a small 
soft green subterminal thickening (the green tip of botanists), the 
apex either rounded, truncate, obtuse or acute; the back plano- 
convex, or sometimes even cymbiform, sometimes even flat. 
Leaves broad, at least the lower and radical, EREA of 
cordate-ovate type, membranous, smoothish or harsh, pubescent 
or glabrous, persistently petioled, with wie spreading 
veins. 
Heads numerous or few; plants seldom very floriferous, not 
producing heads by the hundreds as in the Heterophylit. 
Inflorescence of corymbose aspect, cymose in development, 
chiefly produced by the formation of a terminal arrest on each 
stem or branch, this arrest-region consisting of two or three nodes, 
each with its leaf and bud, these buds developing into pedicels or 
branches which are at first so little separated as to simulate verti- 
cillate branching during early growth ; later separating slightly or 
considerably, but usually retaining a repeatedly trifurcate aspect. 
As in allied Compositae, though the central or terminal head of 
each stem or branch develops first, the central disk-flowers develop 
last, being long preceded by the rays and by the outer disk-flow- 
