Whitefield Aster (Aster simplex)
- Family: Aster (Asteraceae)
- Flowering: August-October.
- Field Marks: This usually white-rayed aster differs from other white-rayed species by its nearly smooth leaves and by its flower heads that are not arranged in 1-sided clusters.
- Habitat: Wet prairies, wet meadows, low woods, edges of streams, wet roadside ditches, sloughs, borders of ponds and lakes.
- Habit: Perennial herb with long rhizomes.
- Stems: Erect, rather stout, branched or unbranched, green, smooth or nearly so, up to 6 feet tall.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, elliptic to oblanceolate, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, toothed, smooth on both surfaces, up to 8 inches long, up to 1 1/4 inches wide.
- Flowers: Many crowded into a head with many heads per plant, each head up to 3/4 inch across and subtended by many narrow whitish bracts with a green midvein, the outer flowers white and ray-like, the inner yellow, tubular, forming a disk.
- Sepals: Absent.
- Petals: Some white, very narrow, ray-like, 20-50 in number, others yellow, 5-parted, forming a short tube.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior, hairy.
- Fruits: Achenes elongated, hairy, light brown, about 1/10 inch long.
- Notes: The fruits of this species are eaten by waterfowl.
Previous Species -- New England Aster (Aster novae-angliae)
Return to Species List -- Group 8
Next Species -- Fairy Aster (Aster vimineus)
