214 DESCRIPTION OF ASTER; DIVARICATI 
Leaf-color dull apple-green, very pale beneath, fawn-color on 
their autumnal turning, by end of September. 
Inflorescence high and convex-topped, with percurrent axis, 
and long slender suberect peduncles each bearing small convex 
umbelliform cluster of small heads, 5; in. high or less, borne on 
filiform pedicels of similar length. 
Rays snow white, chiefly 8 and 6, oblong, short, rounded at 
the apex, often reddening with age. 
Disks full, broad and | high, of about 20 florets, on expanding of 
a warm golden yellow and exhaling a bee- bread fragrance, soon 
turning a glowing sienna-color, and on withering a dull brown. 
Usually scarce any red is developed, but sometimes it occurs, 
replacing the sienna-color. 
Achenes clavately fusiform, sometimes at maturity retaining 
close short hairs along the numerous fine striations, but often 
losing them early and becoming smooth before maturity. 
Pappus ecru and after drying becoming faint fawn or slightly 
tawny after 4 years. 
Radicals very rarely produced, perhaps 3 clusters in the many 
hundreds of plants observed; a group found Se. 15, "97, showed 
6 similar cordate-orbicular leaves, usually 3 x 214 in., with sharp 
crenate teeth. 
Habitat. Rock-loving plants in sunny or slightly shaded 
places ; N. Y., to the mountains of Virginia, about the middle of 
Stems loosely scattered, usually several together from one 
rootstock-cluster ; occasionally these clusters are near enough to 
each other to fill rocky spaces or slopes. The plant seems to be 
partial to dry rock slopes covered with thin soil and also to the 
drier places in rocky swamps, where tufts of the plant grow just 
above wet clayey mud; as Clayton indicated in his original 
description, 2” saxoszs aut lutosts. 
Altes. For distinctions from A. mollescens see that species. 
From A. divaricatus into which it passes, typical A. Claytoni is 
distinguished readily by its shorter smaller rough coarse leaves, 
sessile truncated axiles, and pinnated inflorescence of subumbellate 
clusters borne along a percurrent axis. It is usually paler, has 
less red in its disks, and has smaller heads. From A. ardens, one 
of its near allies, it is distinguished partly by smaller size, narrower 
and tapered bracts, and very different inflorescence. A. ardens 
has also usually an intensely bright deep-red stem and deep- 
crimson disks. 
