8/9/2023 0 Comments Calico aster![]() There are plenty of woodland aster choices, and while more sun will mean more blooms for heart-leaved aster, you’ll still get the color you’re looking for in a shady, dappled sun or woodland edge garden. Heart-Leaved Aster, Blue Wood Aster ( Symphyotrichum cordifolium) It’s a bit more airy and open in structure, and still moderately branched at the top, but it will thrive in well-drained sandy, rocky, clay or loam soil that gets all the summer and autumn heat. If you enjoy the general form, size and bloom color of smooth aster but have a really hot, dry, sunny site, then this is the native aster for you. Sky Blue Aster, Azure Aster ( Symphyotrichum oolentangiense) In a dense planting, you’ll only find a few seedlings, year to year. In open soil or a bed dominated by wood mulch, self-seeding can be moderate. Plants are 2 feet wide on average, and the autumn color is yellow to red. As you might have guessed, the leaves are very smooth with a blue-green tint. It will bloom in late summer to the middle of fall with blue to violet flowers atop 2- to 3-foot stems with moderate branching toward the top. Perhaps the most adaptable native aster on this list, smooth aster does well in full to part sun with medium moisture, in everything from loamy clay, to clay, to loamy sand soil. Here are six native asters that provide blooms and pollinator food from August until October or beyond. With the exception of smooth aster, they are all hardy to USDA Zone 3. Regardless, we’re going to look at a few native aster species as “asters,” focusing on Symphyotrichum species, which thrive in most cultivated garden settings. The benefit of this Latin chaos? We can better understand how plants interact with their ecosystems and effectively track the rise or decline of species. So now an aster could be Symphyotrichum, Eurybia, Baccharis, Ericameria, Solidago and more. But with advances in DNA research, we’ve seen that just because plants look alike doesn’t mean they are closely related. There used to be about 180 North American plants in the genus whose flowers looked starlike. Aster is an old-world genus name coming from the Greek “astron,” which means star. Most are now officially called Symphyotrichumpronounced sim-fie-oh-TRICK-um or sim-fee-oh-TRY-kum. Now before we go any further, it’s important to note that asters aren’t Aster anymore. As a group, asters provide a succession of blooms that lasts from the first big-leaved asters flowering in late summer to the aromatic asters still blooming in mid- to late autumn. Pollinator support goes hand in hand with beauty for us. Pearl crescent and silvery checkerspots also use asters as a host plant. The specialist arcigera flower moth caterpillar feeds on aster blooms and seeds, then overwinters as a pupae in the soil, emerging as an adult in late summer to mate and begin the cycle again. Various flies, such as bee and syrphid, will visit, alongside soldier and other beetles. Male bees are often seen refueling on asters before they continue their search for a female. Native aster species provide shallow blooms that make for easy pollinator landing pads, and with the large number of available florets filled with food, an insect can hang out longer while feeding and conserve energy. Another way is creating awareness in our communities by displaying stunning plants loaded with pollinators. Providing as many resources as possible for adult and larval-stage insects and bugs is one way to help. ![]() Scientific studies show precipitous insect decline, which behooves gardeners to not only be aware of the issues facing pollinators but how we can be part of the answer. From a distance, it may seem like asters are the center of a snow globe as the glittering, delicate bodies of flies, bees and beneficial wasps rise and then settle again over the flowers. ![]() ![]() If you’ve wandered by a native aster on a crisp autumn afternoon while the sun warms your back, then you’ve seen what this plant does for local wildlife, especially pollinating insects and bugs. ![]()
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