BLUE AND PURPLE WILD FLOWERS 
patience and experience to distinguish a majority of the 
two hundred and fifty species existing in North America. 
The word Aster is derived from the Greek, meaning 
star, and it alludes to their pretty radiating flower 
heads. Asters are perennial, mostly branching, and 
late-flowering herbs with alternating leaves. They 
are rarely annual, and grow from six inches to eight 
feet in height, and possess Daisy-like flowers vary- 
ing in size from one-eighth of an inch to two inches 
broad. The floral heads are seldom solitary, and are 
usually arranged in terminal groups or clusters of both 
tubular and radiate flowers. The white, pink, purple, 
blue or violet ray flowers are pistillate. The tubular 
disc flowers are perfect, with five-lobed corollas, usually 
yellow and changing to red, brown or purple. The 
fading flower usually develops tiny whiskered seeds, 
that sail hither and thither with the wind, much after 
the fashion of those of the Dandelion. The.coloured 
rayed species greatly outnumber the white-rayed, but 
the latter are so very prolific and abundant that they 
do not appear in the minority. Some species have 
very long recurving ray flowers, and the latter are 
found in every degree of length down to one speciés, 
A. augustus, which has the corolla of its ray flowers 
reduced to a mere tube. 
LARGE-LEAVED ASTER 
Aster macrophgllus. Thistle Family. 
This rather coarse and extremely variable species 
has a stout, simple, purple-stained, angular stalk, 
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