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Scientific Name
Liatris spp.
Family
Asteraceae (daisies, sunflowers)
Description
Missouri boasts nine native species of blazing stars, also called gayfeathers, in genus Liatris. These showy, upright, unbranching spikes or wands of magenta-pink wildflowers typically bloom in sunny habitats.
If you’re wondering how to tell if a Missouri plant is a blazing star, or you’re wanting to learn about Missouri’s blazing stars as a group, this is your page.
As a group, Missouri’s blazing stars all have some things in common:
- Habit: Blazing stars are perennial, single stalked or with up to several stalks arising from a common base, erect or ascending, and do not branch.
- The flowerheads are typically stalkless (or on very short stems) and clustered along the top of the plant stalk, usually looking like a spike or wand. The plants bloom from the top down, as opposed to the bottom up.
- The florets (tiny flowers) are grouped into flowerheads, but unlike more famous members of the sunflower family, blazing stars have no petal-like ray florets. With only disk florets, the flowerheads look fuzzy.
- Flower color is typically pink to reddish purple or magenta (rarely white).
- The styles (elongated pistil tips) are 2-branched, threadlike, and protrude far outside the 5-lobed petal tube.
- The spacing of flowerheads on the stalk can help with IDs. Some species have the flowerheads so crowded that you cannot see the main stalk between them. In others, the flowerheads are spaced apart so you can see the stalk between them. Some of the latter have the flowerheads on small stems, holding them slightly out from the stalk, while in others the flowerheads are sessile, attached directly to the main stalk.
- Involucral bracts (in-vuh-LOO-krul brakts), also called phyllaries, are the greenish, leafy or scalelike structures covering the base of the flowerhead. Collectively, they are called the involucre. They are often arranged in overlapping series (whorls).
- Bract tips can be pointed, rounded, or jagged, and they can be long and slender or abrupt.
- Bracts can be pressed close against the involucre or they can spread or curl outward.
- They can be curved or inflated into swollen-looking pouches.
- The texture and thickness of bracts can vary, and so can their color (pure green or tinged with purple).
- The number of florets per flowerhead can be helpful for IDs. Pick apart a representative flowerhead or two over a sheet of paper and count the tiny florets that fall from the involucre.
- Blazing star leaves are narrow, alternate, and can be so dense on the stem they appear whorled. The leaves at the base of the plant are the largest. The leaves are progressively smaller and narrower up the stem. The leaves near the top of the stem are often linear (grasslike).
- After blooming, the florets of blazing stars mature into seedlike fruits. These are topped with a pappus (cluster of bristles). In some blazing stars, the bristles are equipped with tiny barbs; in others, the bristles are soft and feathery. This distinction can be helpful for identification.
This list of Missouri’s nine Liatris species is in order (roughly) by how common or widespread they are, with the most commonly encountered species at the top. Links go to each species' own Field Guide page.
- Prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya)
- Rough blazing star (Liatris aspera)
- Scaly blazing star (Liatris squarrosa)
- Cylindrical blazing star (Liatris cylindracea)
- Savanna blazing star (Liatris scariosa)
- Appalachian blazing star (Liatris squarrulosa)
- Bottlebrush blazing star (Liatris mucronata)
- Dotted blazing star (Liatris punctata)
- Dense blazing star (Liatris spicata)
Liatris hybrids: Where they grow near one another, different Liatris species may interbreed and create hybrids. The hybrid offspring plants are often fertile and can make a colony.
- If you find a blazing star (or patch of blazing stars) that seems to be intermediate between some of the descriptions above, you may have found a hybrid. Look around for one or two of the parent species growing nearby.
Similar species: The daisy/sunflower family is very large, and many species also have pinkish-purple, fuzzy-looking flowerheads. Examples include ironweeds, knapweeds, thistles, Joe-Pye weeds, and mist flowers.
- Blazing stars are distinguished by their growth habit: plants with unbranching stalks, bearing stemless or short-stemmed flowerheads in wandlike spikes or spike-like elongated clusters at the tops of the stalks.
Other Common Names
Snakeroots
Button Snakeroots
Size
Height: most Missouri blazing stars are around 2–5 feet tall. Our smallest species, L. cylindracea, is not more than 12 inches tall.
Where To Find
Statewide. Different species have different distributions within the state. The regional distribution can be very useful for identifying some of our species.
Habitat and Conservation
Blazing stars usually grow in open, sunny habitats, generally ranging from prairies and pastures, to glades and openings in woodlands, to railroads and roadsides.
Different species have slightly different habitat preferences and ranges within the state.
Blazing stars are beloved by native wildflower gardeners, so you may find nearly any species in cultivation statewide.
Status
Native Missouri perennial wildflowers.
Three blazing stars are listed as Missouri species of conservation concern:
- Dotted blazing star, Liatris punctata (vulnerable)
- Savanna blazing star, Liatris scariosa (imperiled)
- Dense blazing star, Liatris spicata (native populations have been extirpated)
Human Connections
Blazing stars are among the showier plants to grace native wildflower gardens as well as formal landscape plantings. Several species are in cultivation.
- Most of Missouri’s blazing star species can be purchased at native plant nurseries.
- Liatris spicata is very popular and is often available at garden centers and home supply stores; it often appears at florist shops as a cut flower.
- Blazing stars are also used in dried flower arrangements.
- In gardens, blazing stars are a magnet for pollinators such as butterflies and bees.
- Birds feed on the seeds.
- The sweet, thickened rootstocks, however, are attractive to voles and other herbivorous mammals.
Rootstocks of various blazing star species were eaten, raw or baked, by early American settlers and by Native Americans. Apparently they were mostly used as a survival food.
Various Native American tribes used some blazing star species medicinally to treat a wide range of ailments.
- The common name “snakeroot,” applied to certain blazing stars, apparently comes from a belief that they could be used for treating snakebites.
In the past, horses have been fed a decoction of the rootstocks of certain blazing star species as a stimulant before races.
To understand the name “gayfeather,” imagine yourself as a settler journeying west through what were formerly vast expanses of native, treeless tallgrass prairie. These showy flowers must have lifted hearts, even when the wagon wheel broke!
Ecosystem Connections
Many types of insects visit blazing stars for food.
- Monarch butterflies are a famous example, but a wide variety of other butterflies, skippers, bees, beetles, flies, and other insects collect pollen or nectar.
- Aphids and other sap-suckers drink the plant juices with their strawlike bills.
- Many herbivorous insects chew on or bore into the leaves, flowers, stems, rootstocks, or other plant parts. Some are specialized to eat only blazing stars.
Blazing stars are the host plants for some species of noctuid flower moths. Flower moths are named because their caterpillars eat the flower buds and developing seeds of their host plants. The females deposit eggs onto the host plants.
- The beautifully pink bleeding flower moth (Schinia sanguinea) is limited to Liatris species and can survive on nothing else. The caterpillars are rosy pink to camouflage them against their pink-flowering larval food plants. The adults are also rosy pink to camouflage them against the flowers as they rest and deposit eggs on these flowers.
- A closely related species, Schinia tertia, is known to feed on L. punctata.
- Caterpillars of the three-lined flower moth (Schinia trifascia) feed on a variety of plants in the eupatorium tribe, including false boneset, Joe-Pye weeds, and blazing stars.
In addition to the many insects that feed on the plants, other animals are attracted to blazing stars in order to hunt the herbivores (and each other).
- Lady bugs, robber flies, mantises, assassin bugs, crab spiders, are among the arthropods that hunt insects among the flowerheads.
- Birds come to eat nearly any of the insects and spiders they can find.
Birds eat the fruits of blazing stars, which are like tiny sunflower seeds. Goldfinches are notable consumers of blazing stars, coneflowers, thistles, sunflowers, and sunflower-family seeds that develop in late summer as they nest late in the season. The fuzzy tufts of blazing star seeds are also used to line nests.
Mammals that eat blazing stars include rabbits, woodchuck, and deer, which graze on the aboveground parts of the plant, and voles, which gnaw on the corms or other thickened rootstocks.
Globally, there are about 45 species in genus Liatris. They are native to North America.
Many native prairie plants have roots that penetrate deep into the soil, and blazing stars are no exception. For example, prairie blazing star’s roots can easily reach 10 to 12 feet deep, and the roots of cylindrical blazing star can extend 15 feet below the surface!
- The long roots enable the plants to reach life-giving moisture and survive in hot, dry, competitive environments.
- Over thousands of years, the presence of countless deep-rooted prairie plants built up the rich, fertile soils of the Great Plains.
- Before European settlement, more than a third of Missouri was covered by native tallgrass prairie.
Deep-rooted, perennial plants like blazing stars are incredibly important for stabilizing soils against erosion caused by rains, floods, winds, and more.
- For thousands of years, native prairies thrived despite occasional intensive trampling and grazing by vast, roaming herds of bison and occasional fires set by lightning or by Native Americans.
- Plowing the prairies for row crops — and eliminating the super-tough, feet-thick thatch of native prairie roots and sod — created conditions that led to the devastating Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
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Media Gallery
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Caption
Prairie blazing star, like other members of genus Liatris, blooms from the top down. The oldest, spent flowers that are maturing into seeds are at the top, while the newer, younger flowers open progressively lower down the stem.
Credit
Julianna Schroeder
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Prairie blazing star is well-named. It occurs in glades, upland prairies, ledges and tops of bluffs, savannas, openings of upland forests. Other blazing stars, however, live in these habitats, too.
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Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Prairie blazing star is usually a hairy plant. The stem leaves are quite narrow and very numerous.
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Katy Chayka, www.minnesotawildflowers.info, Bugwood.org
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Light from the setting sun illuminates the pink, noodly-looking style branches that protrude from the florets of prairie blazing star.
Credit
Julianna Schroeder
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This stray, single flowerhead arising from well below the main cluster of densely packed flowerheads shows the hairy stalk and the hairy, long, sharply pointed, recurving bracts that separate prairie blazing star from its closest lookalike.
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Julianna Schroeder
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After blooming, prairie blazing star’s flowers turn into seedlike fruits. These are topped with a cluster of bristles that are equipped with tiny barbs. The interesting tall, fuzzy spikes are often used in dried flower arrangements.
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Julianna Schroeder
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Rough blazing star is an easy-to-identify Missouri liatris. The flowerheads are spaced out along the stalk and not crowded together, and the bracts at the base of the flowerheads are swollen or pouchlike.
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Blazing stars are an important (and showy) part of the complex community of plants in Missouri’s tallgrass prairie and glade habitats. Rough blazing star can be found nearly statewide.
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Noppadol Paothong
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Photo by Noppadol Paothong, courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation
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Like other liatrises, rough blazing star has its flowerheads arranged along a single, upright stalk. But in rough blazing star, the flowerheads are separated enough that you can easily see the stalk between them.
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Rough blazing star is fairly common and scattered nearly statewide. Note the rounded, pouched, purple-edged bracts at the base of the flowerhead.
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Noppadol Paothong
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Photo by Noppadol Paothong, courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation
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Scaly blazing star (Liatris squarrosa) is scattered nearly statewide, but apparently absent from most of the western half of northern Missouri. Identify it by the bracts at the base of the flowerhead.
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Mason Brock (Masebrock), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Scaly blazing star (Liatris squarrosa) has involucral bracts that curl back to make the involucres look like burs. At 8–30 inches, it is rather short compared to most other blazing stars.
Credit
Karan A. Rawlins, University of Georgia, Bugwood.org
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Missouri has three varieties of scaly blazing star, with var. hirsuta the most common by far. It looks fairly shaggy with long, straight, spreading hairs. Many botanists consider it a separate species, hairy blazing star (or hairy gayfeather, L. hirsuta).
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Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Cylindrical blazing star is our shortest blazing star, usually only reaching 8–12 inches tall. It is scattered in the Ozark and Ozark border regions and north on the eastern half of the state.
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Rob Routledge, Sault College, Bugwood.org
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Cylindrical blazing star is named for the cylindrical flowerhead bases. The bracts press snugly against the base, accentuating the cylindrical look.
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Mason Brock (Masebrock), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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As with many members of the sunflower family, the involucral bracts are incredibly helpful for identifying the various species of blazing stars. Note how cylindrical blazing star’s bracts are pressed snugly against the involucre, accentuating its cylindrical shape.
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Joshua Mayer from Madison, WI, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Cylindrical blazing star is a generally smooth, usually hairless, very short blazing star with stiff stems.
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Rob Routledge, Sault College, Bugwood.org
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Savanna blazing star is not very common or widespread in Missouri. It is scattered in the Ozarks and north to Pike County. It is easily confused with rough blazing star (L. aspera, which is much more commonly encountered) and Appalachian blazing star (L. squarrulosa).
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Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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Savanna blazing star has huge, fluffy, buttonlike flowerheads and a long flowering period. It should be cultivated more often. It is listed as a Missouri species of conservation concern, ranked as imperiled. Get your plants from a reputable native wildflower nursery, or grow from seeds.
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Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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Many blazing star species occasionally have individual white-flowering plants. Some of these have been propagated and turned into marketable cultivated varieties, such as this savanna, or eastern blazing star (Liatris scariosa) cultivar called ‘White Spires.’
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David J. Stang, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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In Appalachian, or southern blazing star (Liatris squarrulosa), the involucral bracts are widest at the outer portion, with rounded tips, nearly all with the tip spreading or reflexed, with only the innermost (topmost) series usually ascending.
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Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Dotted blazing star (Liatris punctata) typically has a shrubby look due to the multiple unbranching stalks that arise from its single taproot.
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Matt Lavin from Bozeman, Montana, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Dotted blazing star, like bottlebrush blazing star, has narrow, wide-spreading leaves that are interspersed along the floral spike, giving the plant a bottlebrush look.
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Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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The flowerheads of dotted blazing star are densely crowded into an elongated spike, with the main stem barely visible between the heads. Each flowerhead contains only 3–7 florets.
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Matt Lavin from Bozeman, Montana, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Dotted blazing star (Liatris punctata) is a species of conservation concern in Missouri. It is uncommon in our northwestern border counties. It occurs in loess hill prairies and, rarely, in upland prairies.
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Dave Powell, USDA Forest Service (retired), Bugwood.org
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Dotted blazing star (Liatris punctata) is named for its glandular-dotted leaves. Note also that there is only 1 main vein, and the leaves are mostly hairless.
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Matt Lavin from Bozeman, Montana, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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After blooming, dotted blazing star’s flowers turn into seedlike fruits. These are topped with a cluster of soft, featherlike bristles. In some other blazing stars, the bristles are merely equipped with tiny barbs instead of being feathery.
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Matt Lavin from Bozeman, Montana, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Dotted blazing star (Liatris punctata) leaves are mostly hairless and smooth, but at least some of the leaves (the younger ones) are hairy along the margins. The hairs will break off with age, leaving tiny, stubby bases.
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William M. Ciesla, Forest Health Management International, Bugwood.org
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In Missouri, bottlebrush blazing star (Liatris mucronata) lives only in the southwest part of the state, specifically the western portion of the Ozarks (Barry, Stone, Taney, Ozark, Christian, Douglas, Wright, and Texas counties).
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© Kenneth Bader, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)
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In Missouri, bottlebrush blazing star (Liatris mucronata) occurs in glades and ledges and tops of bluffs, on limestone and dolomite substrates. Unlike the very similar dotted blazing star, it does not occur in northwest Missouri; it occurs only in the southwestern part of the state.
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© Kimberlie Sasan, some rights reserved (CC-BY-ND)
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Bottlebrush blazing star (Liatris mucronata), like dotted blazing star, is bushy and has several unbranching stalks arising from the base.
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© Nathan Aaron, some rights reserved (CC-BY)
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The magenta-pink flowerheads of bottlebrush blazing star are densely crowded into an elongated spike at the top portion of the plant stalks; the stalk is not easy to see between the heads. Dotted blazing star is quite similar.
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© Greg Lasley, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)
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In bottlebrush blazing star (Liatris mucronata), the middle and upper stem leaves are narrow, wide-spreading, and stick out at right angles; they give the plant a bottlebrush look. Dotted blazing star is quite similar.
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© James Bynum, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)
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In bottlebrush blazing star (Liatris mucronata), the leaves are green, rather soft, mostly arched or curved outward, and smooth (hairless) (not grayish green or with hair on the margins of younger leaves). The leaves are not dotted with tiny glands.
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© Kimberlie Sasan, some rights reserved (CC-BY-ND)
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As a native, dense blazing star (Liatris spicata) might be completely gone from our state. But it is common elsewhere in the eastern United States, and this is the species most commonly available at garden centers.
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Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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The flowerheads of blazing stars are clustered along the top of the plant stalk, often looking like a spike or wand. The plants bloom from the top down, as opposed to the bottom up. This is dense blazing star, Liatris spicata.
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Hedwig Storch, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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The rootstock of dense blazing star, like those of several of our blazing stars, is a globe-shaped corm. Native Americans ate these knobby corms as a survival food.
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Bff, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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One way to distinguish dense blazing star from prairie blazing star is that dense blazing star is typically a glabrous plant — smooth, lacking hairs. Prairie blazing star is usually a hairy plant.
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David J. Stang, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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In gardens, blazing stars, including dense blazing star, are popular because they are a magnet for late-season pollinators such as butterflies and bees. Birds feed on the seeds. Most of Missouri’s blazing star species can be purchased at native plant nurseries.
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Beverly Turner, Jackson Minnesota, Bugwood.org
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After blooming, dense blazing star’s flowers turn into seedlike fruits. These are topped with a cluster of bristles that are equipped with tiny barbs. In some other blazing star species, the bristles are soft and feathery.
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User:Carstor, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Dense blazing star (usually found only in cultivation in Missouri) can be distinguished from its closest lookalike by the flowerhead bracts, which are rounded or bluntly pointed, pressed snugly against the flowerhead, and not hairy.
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Julia Scher, Cut Flower Exports of Africa, USDA APHIS PPQ, Bugwood.org
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About Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants in Missouri
A very simple way of thinking about the green world is to divide the vascular plants into two groups: woody and nonwoody (or herbaceous). But this is an artificial division; many plant families include some species that are woody and some that are not. The diversity of nonwoody vascular plants is staggering! Think of all the ferns, grasses, sedges, lilies, peas, sunflowers, nightshades, milkweeds, mustards, mints, and mallows — weeds and wildflowers — and many more!