Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds.

Fig. 301. - Heath Aster (Aster ericoides). X 1/4.

2f Time of bloom: August to November.

Seed-time: September to December.

Range: Maine to Ontario to the Northwest Territory and British Columbia, southward to Georgia, Texas, and Arizona. Habitat: Dry, open soil; fields, meadows, roadsides, and waste places.

Stem one to six feet tall, very slender, strict, hard and woody, with many slender, spreading branches, pale with a close, minute hairiness. Leaves light green, oblong to linear, spreading, rigid, entire, obtuse, rough-edged, sessile or clasping at the base, hardly more than an inch long, those on the branches much smaller, being mere roughened, awl-like bracts. Heads very many, hardly a half-inch broad, with white rays, in densely crowded, long, rather one-sided, racemose clusters, so closely set along the branches as often to conceal them and really form "white wreaths"; involucre top-shaped, its bracts appressed with spreading and recurved green tips. Achenes hairy, with tawny pappus.

Means of control the same as for the Smooth Aster.