WHITE OR WHITISH FLOWERS 
White Wreath Aster. Many-flowered Aster (Aster mulH- 
florus). Composite family. July to September. 
An aster one to four feet tall. The stem is light-colored, 
finely hairy, freely branching. The noticeable feature is the 
densely flowering branches, with flowers mostly on one side 
(secund) . The flower-heads, not over a third of an inch across, 
axe generally separately placed at the ends of delicate branches 
bearing tiny leaves. Each flower-head has ten to twenty white 
(occasionally purplish) rays, the few disk-flowers are tubular, 
yellow, becoming brownish. The lowermost leaves are lance- 
shaped, pointed, the others are narrow, stiff, without stalks, 
and without teeth, but with rough edges and sharply defined 
midribs, the uppermost linear. 
This extremely attractive aster, with its wealth of blossoms 
and dark-green foliage, grows in such barren and otherwise 
unsightly places as vacant lots on the outskirts of the city. 
The general resemblance of the Many-flowered Aster to the 
golden-rod, to which Blanchan calls attention, is noticeable 
in the cut, though the form of the flower-cluster is not just 
that of any golden-rod, and the flower-heads are larger, ex- 
cepting for those of SoUdago squarrosa. 
The distribution of this aster is extensive to the West and 
South, though Mathews states it is rare in Maine, and absent 
in northern New Hampshire. It is credited with great vari- 
ation in height, thus: " perhaps only a foot, sometimes over 
a man's head" (Blanchan); Britton and Brown place it at 
one to seven feet, but at the risk of some giant specimen be- 
ing mistaken, I have followed the general rule of keeping 
within such dimensions as are ordinarily to be found. 
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