Rush Aster (Aster junciformis)
- Family: Aster (Asteraceae)
- Flowering: August-October.
- Field Marks: This white-rayed aster is distinguished
by its usually smooth stem and its smooth, linear leaves up to
1/4 inch broad.
- Habitat: Bogs, fens.
- Habit: Perennial herb with slender rhizomes.
- Stems: Erect, sparsely branched, smooth or with short
hairs, up to 2 feet tall.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, linear to linear-
lanceolate, pointed at the tip, tapering or rounded at the base,
smooth, usually without teeth, up to 6 inches long, up to 1/4
inch broad.
- Flowers: Many, crowded into a head, with several
heads per plant, each head up to 1 1/2 inches across, subtended
by many green bracts; flowers of 2 kinds: the outer white and
ray-like, up to 50 in number; the inner tubular, yellow, forming
a disk.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: Some white, very narrow, ray-like; others
yellow, 5-lobed, united below into a tube.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior.
- Fruits: Achenes elongated, usually slightly hairy,
with a tuft of hairs at the tip.
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