238 DESCRIPTION OF AsTERS; DIVARICATI 
or wing-based. Teeth strong and sharp, aquiline or at least curv- 
ing-backed; but with straighter-backed teeth intermingled. 
Inflorescence usually small, dense or tangled, irregularly con- 
vex, with wide-spread repeatedly-divaricate short branches, the 
ultimate pedicels short, 1% in. long or so. In occasional larger 
plants the inflorescence becomes pinnately segregated ; in other 
colonies, hundreds of plants will show but scanty rudiments of 
heads. 
Heads always rather small, 34 in. broad, and with about 7 
Aster scutiformis 
Fic. 46. 
dull-white rays. Disks turning reddish-brown. Achenes fusi- 
orm, often retaining some minute bristles. 
Bracts rather pale, narrow-oblong, chanfer-obtuse or even trun- 
cate; rather suddenly changing to very attenuate and numerous 
inner bracts which form about one half of the whole series. 
ves in autumn (middle of October, N. Y. City) uniformly 
suffused with soft reddish-brown, or at first pink-veined or soon 
purpled all over. 
