358 DESCRIPTION OF ASTERS ; MACROPHYLLI 
broad and very irregular, its 12-15 long straggling branches 
smooth and green, mostly about 9 in. long, each breaking into an 
irregular compound cyme with divaricate or divergent branches 
and heads ; these heads at first close-clustered, finally remote and 
long-pedicelled, the pedicels lengthening a half inch while the bud 
enlarges before flowering. Tendency strong to proliferous g growth, 
side-branches and branchlets soon far surpassing their axis. 
Involucre in the bud. very green and smooth, globose or ovoid, 
becoming thick-urceolate in flower, and seeming hemispherical on 
pressing, not large, 1% in. high. 
Bracts all mores with definie broad-triangular green tips i 
otherwise chiefly pale and subscarious, flat and slightly ciliate in 
life. 
Rays violet, 13-15, oblong, ue closely set, not nearly 
so narrow as in the previous species, nor so blue 
Disks few, quickly becoming purple- ded by the time the rays 
are open, and becoming brownish as the rays reach full maturity. 
Disk-flowers very slender, PEN funnel-form, tapering into 
a long thread-like stalk, the stalk 2, body 1, and deep narrow 
lobes }, of the whole length ; the color of the stalk green, abruptly 
changing to yellow or purple at the bell. Achenes small, little 
longer than the disk-lobes. Pappus bright white, soft and copious, 
much overtopping the disk and already dingy by the end of flower- 
ing, rufous in two months after drying 
— Each plant apt to be oled, or growing three or four 
together, such little groups occurring scattered widely through 
the woodlands in which they abound. Rootstalks little developed, 
pulling up for 2—3 inches, beyond which they are found decayed. 
Radicals and also basals usually lacking on flowering plants. 
Surfaces smooth while fresh, usually roughish on drying. All 
leaves thin, and the upper ones as thin as in A. divaricatus. Ten- 
dency strong to blasted buds, and in other cases to lose the ovaries, 
eaten out by larvæ before the bud has opened, causing the bud 
to become ovoid-conical and acute, and finally to wither on its 
stalk. 
Habitat, among bushes in woodlands and clearings, then usu- 
ally not over 3% feet high; or in deeper shade on slight hum- 
mocks in wet woods, especially on soggy ground on a clay sub- 
stratum over shale, then reaching almost 5 ft.; N. E. and Lake 
Champlain to L. Erie; in neither case on the immediate lake-bluff, 
but in the heart of such woodlands as front on the bluffs. 
