102 DESCRIPTION OF ASTERS; DIVARICATI 
ers in successively blooming circles. But great variety "ei with 
regard to the degree of difference in development, and in some 
species or varieties the heads are all in flower at once, men even 
all the disk-flowers in a head at once. 
Pappus white or dingy, often reddening in the herbarium. 
Achenes subfusiform to terete, slightly compressed or not at 
all, finely striate, generally glabrous at maturity, but sometimes 
with fine upward bristles on the striae ; the bristles, if present, are 
often early deciduous. 
Radical leaves more strongly developed than in other Asters ; 
phases of life-history also more strongly accentuated ; variability 
at its height. 
Subsection A. DIVARICATI 
Low white-rayed plants with globose or ovoid buds, ciliate broad- 
tipped bracts, salient teeth, and tomentulose pedicels ; typically with- 
out glands, radicals, or violet color. 
Rays white, under 12; if colored, the color is reddish, pink, 
rose or coppery ; not violet, purple or bluish. Glands absent. 
Buds ovoid, or at first globose.  Bracts ciliate, chiefly rounded or 
truncate. Leaves thinnish, membranous, typically smoothish and 
sharply-toothed, not very harsh nor rigid, not radiately veined at 
the base. Crenate teeth rare; salient teeth common. — Pedicels 
loosely covered all over with minute curly-crisped tomentum ; 
not hairy in lines as in the Curvescentes nor covered with capitate 
glands as in the Macroph ylli. Radicals few, inconspicuous, seldom 
produced. 
Division A. DIVARICATE ASTERS PROPER 
Species I-16 
Thin smoothish prolonged membranous leaves, polymorphous 
on the single plant. Teeth sharp and salient. Stem chiefly green. 
Disks turning dull reddish-brown or brown.  Bracts subtruncate 
or bevel-tipped. 
Subdivision A. Stem assurgent, repeatedly flexuous, brittle. 
Sp. I-11. 
Species 1.* ASTER DIVARICATUS L. White Wood-Aster. 
Low assurgent Aster filling thin northeastern woodlands ; 
with slender divergent pedicels, 6 to 9 rays, truncate and bevelled 
* This species deserves to be placed first because it is a generalized form. Species 
which appear to form varying radiations from this, are to follow successively until 
with species 40, 4. curvescens, another generalized form of equal rank is reached, to 
be followed in turn by variants, etc., etc. It is obvious tbat the linear order imposed 
upon descriptions of variants does not represent the actual irregularly radial order of 
their real relationship. 
(EL E Mu EM 
EU AE 
