Oblong-leaved, or aromatic aster, is well-named. It is notable for its fragrant foliage and its crowded, stalkless, clasping, hairy, narrow, oblong leaves. Like our other native asters, it blooms in late summer and fall.
Oblong-leaved aster is a much-branched perennial with fragrant foliage.
The flowerheads are terminal, with few to many heads, each with 20–40 ray florets that are blue or purple (rarely rose pink); the disk florets are yellow.
Blooms July–November.
The leaves are alternate, sessile, narrow, clasping the stem, with or without small “ears” at the base, oblong to lance-shaped, 1–3½ inches long, lacking teeth.
Similar species: There are 24 species of Symphyotrichum in Missouri, plus many hybrids and varieties. This species is notable for the fragrance of its foliage and its crowded, stalkless, clasping, hairy, narrow (oblong) leaves.
For more information about our native New World asters, see their group page.
Height: to 3 feet.
Scattered mostly south of Missouri River (except Bootheel lowlands); scattered in northern Missouri, especially in eastern counties.
Cultivated statewide.
Habitat and Conservation
Occurs in glades, ledges and tops of bluffs, upland prairies, openings of dry upland forests, and along railroads. Commonly cultivated as a native garden flower.
As with several other of our native asters, this species can hybridize with its close relatives where they grow in the same vicinity.
Status
Native Missouri wildflower.
Human Connections
In cultivation, this native aster does well in rock gardens, where it develops a pleasant shrubby habit when grown in full sun. Other asters can become more lanky.
Special cultivars and hybrids are often available at garden centers.
Like most of our native asters, it blooms late in the season and contributes to the beauty of Missouri's fall landscape, which contributes to Missouri tourism.
Ecosystem Connections
Many types of bees, butterflies, and skippers visit the flowers.
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 oblongifolius, 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.
