Symphyotrichum ascendens

Family: Asteraceae
Common Name: western aster
Symbol: SYAS3
Description: Duration: Perennial Nativity: Native Lifeform: Forb/Herb General: Herbaceous perennials, to 80 cm tall, ascending to erect, herbage uniformly and densely strigose, plants colonial, with long rhizomes. Leaves: Alternate, cauline leaves sessile, linear to lanceolate, to 12 cm long, margins entire, glabrate to densely pubescent, reduced distally, basal leaves elliptic to oblanceolate, petioled, persistent. Flowers: Heads radiate, rays white, pink, blue, or violet, 15-40, 6-10 mm long, disk flowers yellow, sometimes purple-tinged, with triangular corollas, involucres campanulate, 4-7 mm high, graduated, phyllaries overlapping in 3-5 series, densely strigose with squarrose, herbaceous tips, heads few to many in racemes, panicles, or cymes, occasionally solitary. Fruits: Achenes brown, cylindric to obovoid, not compressed, 2-3.5 mm, 3-5-nerved, pubescent. Pappus of whitish sub-equal capillary bristles, 4-7 mm. Ecology: Found open coniferous forests, mountian meadows, grasslands, damp areas in sagebrush steppe and Ponderosa pine woodlands, from 1,500-10,500 ft (457-3200 m); flowering July-September. Distribution: Saskatchewan to Washington, south to Colorado and northern Arizona. Notes: Good characters for this species are the narrow, pubescent leaves and the phyllaries with squarrose, herbaceous tips.