New England aster is one of our showiest native fall-blooming wildflowers. It contributes to Missouri's colorful autumn landscape. The petallike ray florets of wild plants range from reddish purple to purple.
New England aster is the tallest of our many native asters, branching toward the top of the stems.
The flowerheads are many, about the size of a quarter, with many (more than 40) ray florets that are reddish purple to purple (pink to white elsewhere, and crimson, magenta, and darker shades in cultivation). The disk flowers are yellow.
Blooms August–October.
The leaves are alternate, many, narrowly lance-shaped, clasping the stem, and auriculate (with ears at the base).
Similar species: There are 24 species of Symphyotrichum in Missouri, plus many hybrids and varieties. This species is notable for its large flowers, with many petallike ray florets, and its many stem leaves.
For more information about our native New World asters, see their group page.
Height: to 8 feet.
Scattered statewide, but apparently absent from the Mississippi Lowlands and uncommon in portions of the Glaciated and Unglaciated Plains.
Cultivated statewide.
Habitat and Conservation
Found in bottomland prairies, moist depressions of upland prairies, fens, bases of bluffs, banks of streams and rivers, margins of ponds and lakes; also pastures, fencerows, banks of ditches, railroads, and roadsides.
Selections of this species are common in gardens.
Status
Native Missouri wildflower.
Human Connections
New England aster is the most popular of our native asters in cultivation.
- Several cultivars are available with different growth forms and flower colors.
- This showy species usually begins flowering earlier than most of the other asters and tends to stay in flower for a longer time.
Another reason this species is popular in gardening is that it is such a good magnet for butterflies.
One of our showiest native fall-blooming wildflowers, New England aster contributes to Missouri's colorful autumn landscape, which contributes to tourism.
Ecosystem Connections
Many types of bees, flies, butterflies, and skippers visit the flowers. Cross-pollination by insects is necessary in order for the seeds to be viable.
Moth caterpillars and various other insects eat the leaves.
Deer and some other mammals eat the foliage, and wild turkey eat the seeds.
This plant’s scientific name used to be Aster novae-angliae, but botanists in the 1990s firmly established that the big genus Aster now only applies mainly to Eurasian species, and that our native “asters” are not closely related to them and deserve their own genera. Thus the only “true aster” (in the genus Aster) growing wild in Missouri is an escape from gardens.
