White heath aster

Symphyotrichum ericoides, commonly called heath aster or white heath aster, is a clump-forming perennial herb in the Asteraceae native across most of North America from southern Canada to northern Mexico, where it grows in dry prairies, rocky open ground, roadsides, fields and disturbed sites. The plant spreads slowly by short rhizomes and produces erect, slender, much-branched stems 30 to 100 centimetres tall that are pubescent with short stiff hairs. The numerous alternate leaves are very small, 1 to 4 centimetres long, narrowly linear to linear-lanceolate, entire, somewhat heath-like, and the densely crowded short axillary branches bear tiny stiff bracts giving the upper stems a feathery appearance. Small flower heads about 8 to 12 millimetres across are borne in great profusion in much-branched leafy panicles; each head has eight to twenty narrow white ray florets surrounding a centre of yellow to reddish disc florets above a campanulate involucre of imbricate, white-margined, green-tipped phyllaries. The fruit is a small ribbed achene crowned by a tawny capillary pappus that aids wind dispersal. Flowering occurs from late summer into autumn.