Home » Home & Style » Living With Nature » Jewels of the autumn meadow

Jewels of the autumn meadow

© Van Waffle

The meadow is never more glorious than when late summer glazes into autumn. As a child I would walk with my cousins along the verge of a marsh, gathering armloads of blowzy wildflowers. Now I stroll through a river park where vast swaths have gone unmown all summer, culminating with a crescendo of colour. The trail leads past the city limits to an abandoned country site where banks of sumac deepen to crimson. This backdrop sets off a pointillist patchwork of goldenrod, bright-lemon milkweed leaves and the late sunset ripening tones of Japanese barberry.

But no flowers are now more brilliant and varied than those jewels of the autumn meadow, asters. Close relatives of goldenrod, they weave white, pink and soft purple across the floral tapestry.

Intricately evolved

Asters are namesake to the vast family of flowering plants called Asteraceae, encompassing goldenrod, dandelion, lettuce, thistle, daisy, yarrow, boneset, everlasting, chamomile, chicory, fleabane, black-eyed susan, coneflower, coreopsis, sunflower, tansy, Jerusalem artichoke, hawkweed, blazing-star, joe-pye-weed, ragweed, wormwood and bachelor's-buttons to name a few of the more familiar types.

Formerly known as the Compositae, the Asteraceae are characterized by highly developed composite flowers. The central disc is made up of many miniature fertile florets. Each petal is actually an individual infertile floret called a ray, which serves to attract attention from pollinating insects. This intricately evolved family may in fact be the youngest group of flowering plants on earth. It is also the largest, with around 600 species in North America alone.

Family secrets

Within this family, asters formerly comprised a huge worldwide genus called Aster. However DNA research has shown they are not all as closely related as previously thought. North American species are now grouped within the genus Symphyotrichum, distinguishing them from Aster species which are mostly native to South America, Africa and Asia. There are about 140 species and subspecies of Symphyotrichum across the continent. Close relatives are the goldenrods, Solidago, and goldenasters, Chrysopsis, which prefer the warmer or subtropical parts of the United States.

Ontario alone is home to about 40 species and subspecies. Not all inhabit meadows and disturbed sites; a few prefer woodlands. Wherever you are, you'll need a good field guide with illustrations and describing distinguishing features, like a gallery provided in Nature North ezine, from Manitoba.

The species I see most commonly on my morning walks include white heath aster (S. ericoides), small white aster (S. lateriflorum) and New England aster (S. novae-angliae). The white heath aster has been one of my favourites since the first time I saw its dense bright white

The copyright of the article Jewels of the autumn meadow in Living With Nature is owned by . Permission to republish Jewels of the autumn meadow in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.