Growing like branching wands of golden rod, the DENSE-FLOWERED,
WHITE-WREATHED, or STARRY ASTER (A. multiflorus) bears its minute
flower-heads crowded close along the branches, where many small,
stiff leaves, like miniature pine needles, follow them. Each
flower measures only about a quarter of an inch across. From
Maine to Georgia and Texas westward to Arizona and British
Columbia the common bushy plant lifts its rather erect, curving,
feathery branches perhaps only a foot, sometimes above a man's
head, from August till November, in such dry, open, sterile
ground as the white heath aster also chooses.
No one not a latter-day, structural botanist could see why the
TALL, FLAT-TOP WHITE ASTER (Doellingeria umbella) is now an
outcast from the aster tribe into a separate genus. This common
species of moist soil and swamps has its numerous small heads
(containing ten to fifteen rays each) arranged in large,
terminal, compound clusters (corymbs). The stem, which rises from
two to eight feet, has its long-tapering, alternate leaves, hairy
on the veins beneath and rough margined.
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