A very large family of usually vigorous, often showy, and sometimes beautiful perennials, mostly with bluish or white flowers, chiefly natives of North America. Many of these, of an inferior order of beauty, used to be planted in our mixed borders, which they very much helped to bring into discredit, and they form a very good example of a class of plants for which the true place is the copse, or rough and half-cared-for places in shrubberies and copses, and by wood-walks, where they will grow as freely as any native weeds, and in many cases prove highly attractive in late summer and autumn. Such kinds as A. pyrenaeus, Amellus, and turbinellus, are amongst the most ornamental perennials we have. With the Asters may be grouped the Galatellas, the Vernonias, and also the handsome and rather dwarf Erigeron speciosus, which, however, not being so tall, could not fight its way among such coarse vegetation as that in which the Asters may be grown. Associated with the Golden Rods (Solidago) - also common plants of the American woods and copses - the best of the Asters or Michaelmas Daisies will form a very interesting aspect of vegetation. It is that one sees in American woods in late summer and autumn when the Golden Rods and Asters are seen in bloom together. It is one of numerous aspects of the vegetation of other countries which the "wild garden" will make possible in gardens. To produce such effects the plants must, of course, be planted in some quantity in one part of a rather open wood, and not repeated all over the place or mixed up with many other things. Nearly 200 species are known, about 150 of which form part of the rich vegetation of North America. These fine plants inhabit that great continent, from Mexico - where a few are found - to the United States and Canada, where they abound, and even up to the regions altogether arctic of that quarter of the world.