Visiting a Little-Known Aster

Thanks to a post last week on the Flora of New York State's Facebook page, I learned about an aster I'd never heard of before: Glossy-leaved Aster (Symphyotrichum firmum).  I believe lots of folks have never heard of it either, since it's not described in my Newcomb's Wildflower Guide nor my Peterson's Field Guide to Wildflowers nor my Audubon Society's Field Guide to North American Wildflowers (East). And when I looked for it on the Native Plant Trust's Go Botany website, I was sent to the page for the closely related Swamp Aster  (Symphyotrichum puniceum), a similar-looking species with which S. firmum is occasionally lumped. 

Our New York Flora Association's Plant Atlas does indeed list S. firmum among our state's native asters, though.  But it lists it as vouchered from only four counties in New York State, all of them far away from the Washington County site where masses of it have recently been observed by state botanists.  Thankfully, that site is located not far from me, so my friend Ruth Brooks and I headed off to the Alfred Z. Solomon Grassland Bird-Viewing Area near Fort Edward to have a look at this aster for ourselves.

This extensive Washington County Grassland site is quite famous among birders, and is, in fact, named as one of our state's Important Bird Areas. It encompasses 13,000 acres of critical grassland habitat  located along the Atlantic and Hudson River flyways in upstate New York, hosting abundant populations of grassland breeding birds and wintering raptors, including Snowy Owls and state-endangered Short-eared Owls, among other birds of concern. 

Although impressively scenic and biologically important, I had never thought of these grasslands as a particularly important site for interesting botanical finds.  But our state botanist friends were kind enough to guide us to where we might find this heretofore under-reported species of native aster, growing in impressive abundance.  Masses of its near-white flowers were growing in hedge-high tight clusters, immediately visible as we made our way down the trail from the bird-viewing platform.

The habit of clustering tightly together into such massive clumps is apparently one of the distinguishing characteristics of this species.

A closer look at the flowers revealed that what looked like white flowers from afar were indeed slightly blue.

I did find the vernacular name "Glossy-leaved Aster" a bit misleading, since the clasping leaves, while green and smooth, did not look very glossy to me.  I made sure to take a close photo of some leaves and the undersides of the flowers to display the particular structure of the involucres and phyllaries, hoping to decipher the descriptions provided by Flora of North America's website. (I copied those descriptions here, below this photo.) I was struck by how the rayflowers curled so tightly as they matured, a feature I have noticed before on other asters, but not so prettily.

From Flora of North America:

57. Symphyotrichum firmum (Nees) G. L. Nesom, Phytologia. 77: 282. 1995.

Glossy-leaved aster

Aster firmus Nees, Syn. Aster. Herb., 25. 1818; A. lucidulus (A. Gray) Wiegand; A. puniceus Linnaeus var. firmus (Nees) Torrey & A. Gray

Perennials, 40–250 cm, colonial; long-rhizomatous. Stems 1, erect (straight, ± thin, 2–8 mm diam at base, ± ribbed, red above each node), glabrous or glabrate (very sparsely hispidulous) proximally to ± hispidulous distally. Leaves (crowded, light green, shiny) firm, margins crenulate-serrate or entire, revolute, apices acute to acuminate, mucronate, abaxial faces glabrous or midveins sometimes with hairs apically, adaxial glabrous; basal withering by flowering, subpetiolate (petioles dilated, winged, sheathing), blades spatulate to oblanceolate, 30–100+ × 3–20+ mm, bases attenuate to cuneate, margins remotely crenate-serrate to subentire, apices acute to rounded; proximal cauline withering by flowering, sessile or subpetiolate (petioles widely winged, clasping), blades oblanceolate, 50–150 × 20–30 mm, greatly reduced distally, bases auriculate, clasping, apices acute to acuminate; distal sessile, blades lanceolate to lance-elliptic to oblanceolate, 40–70 × 10–25 mm, little reduced distally, bases auriculate, clasping, margins entire, apices acute to acuminate. Heads in densely paniculiform arrays, branches ascending, densely leafy (branch leaves often overtopping heads). Peduncles 0.2–3+ cm, glabrous or pilose in lines, bracts 4–6, lanceolate-linear, often subtending heads. Involucres campanulate, 6–12 mm. Phyllaries in 4–5(–6) series, linear-lanceolate to linear, slightly unequal, bases indurate 1 / 5 – 1 / 2 , margins not scarious (outer) to narrowly scarious, erose, hyaline, sparsely ciliolate, green zones linear-lanceolate, outer sometimes ± foliaceous, apices acute to acuminate or long-acuminate to caudate, faces glabrous. Ray florets 20–40; corollas usually blue to pale lavender, sometimes white, laminae 9–18 × 1.0–1.2 mm. Disc florets 30–50; corollas yellow or cream becoming pink or purple, (4.5–)5–6.4 mm, tubes shorter than funnelform throats, lobes triangular to lanceolate, 0.6–0.9 mm. Cypselae purple or brown, obovoid, oblong or oblanceolate, ± falcate, ± compressed, 1.5–3 mm, 3–4-nerved, faces glabrous or sparsely strigillose; pappi white, 5.2–8 mm. 2n = 16.

Flowering Aug–Oct. Open, wet soils, spreading into mesic mineral soils, fens, marshes, wet roadsides; 100–400 m; Alta., Man., Ont., Sask.; Ga., Iowa, Mich., Minn., Mo., Nebr.

The range of this little known species is badly defined because some specimens attributed to it are in fact white-rayed, glabrate forms of Symphyotrichum puniceum. More work is needed to verify the status of this species.

After paying our respects to this fascinating and highly unusual find, we walked about the meadows a while, enjoying the vast sky with its sweeping clouds, the patchwork colors of the meadows, the sight of the wind moving in waves through the tawny grasses, and the view of distant mountains on the far horizon. And we also stopped to admire some "weeds" that added their own beauty to the path beneath our feet.  One of those weeds was the gorgeously royal-blue and hot-pink Viper's Bugloss (Echium vulgare).

I usually find these pretty pink miniature hollyhocks called Cheeses (Malva neglecta) sprawling across suburban sidewalks, but here they were, sprawling across some gravelly areas in the path.  I find their dainty flowers so cunning, looking so similar to the flowers of their much larger cousins.  And their disc-shaped seedpods are also miniature versions of Hollyhock seedpods, of a shape very similar to certain round cheeses, complete with tiny wedge-shaped portions. I'm sure that's how this plant acquired that vernacular name.