ASTER EXCAVATUS 157 
“Stems as in A. divaricatus L. ; leaf-blades thin, smooth, all 
nearly alike, oblong-lanceolate, with rounded base abruptly exca- 
vated into a deep narrow sinus; their margins continuously low- 
serrate with curvescent teeth; petioles very short and slender, 
shorter than the leaf-breadth, replaced by short broad wings at 
the principal axils; the upper axils often clasped by divaricate 
triangular-linear bracteals. UM 
Heads forming convex 
clusters borne on long sub- 
erect branches or reduced 
to a few distant enlarged 
heads. Bracts ciliate, 
smooth - backed, pale and 
thin, short-oblong and ob- 
tuse on some subsolitary 
and without green tips. 
Rays white, or sometimes 
reddened; disk broad, turn- 
ing usually purplish-crim- 
son.—Resembes A. divari- 
catus L., but the narrower 
less attenuate more uniform 
leaves differ in outline, sinus 
and teeth.—In mountain 
or hillside woods, N. Y. to 
N. Car. and Ga. — Early 
fall. — Type, Yonkers, N. 
Y., Se. 16, ’99, Burgess in 
hb. Bu." 
Aster excavatus 
Rootstocks seen are Me 32 
pale yellowish brown, short is 
and thick. Stems chiefly pale, suberect, growing in close clumps 
of few or sometimes of many stems. 
Leaves thin, apple-green or paler, somewhat paler beneath. 
Leaf-form narrowly oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, broadest an 
inch or so above the base, then contracting into two narrowly 
rounded basal lobes which often overlap across the deep narrow 
sinus; size chiefly 3 x I in., sometimes 7 X 3. Teeth close and 
continuous, even into the sinus in many leaves, sharp but not 
greatly projected, chiefly curvescent ; toward the leaf bases, fal- 
cate, aquiline, crenate-serrate and straight-backed teeth inter- 
mingle. Sinus sometimes an inch deep, generally conspicuously 
excavated within. 
