Smooth aster

Symphyotrichum laeve, commonly known as smooth blue aster, is a herbaceous perennial in the family Asteraceae native to most of North America from Canada south through the eastern, central, and western United States, growing in dry open woodlands, prairies, glades, roadsides, and old fields. The plant arises from a stout caudex and short rhizomes and produces erect, glabrous, often glaucous stems 30 to 120 centimetres tall that are unbranched below the inflorescence. Leaves are alternate, smooth and waxy-blue green, thick and somewhat firm, lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, 5 to 15 centimetres long, with entire to slightly serrate margins and clasping cordate to auriculate bases on the mid-stem leaves; upper leaves are reduced and often bract-like. The inflorescence is an open elongate panicle bearing numerous heads. Each capitulum is 1.5 to 2.5 centimetres across with fifteen to twenty-five blue, violet, or lavender ray florets surrounding a centre of yellow disc florets that turn reddish-purple with age. Phyllaries are imbricate in several rows with green diamond-shaped tips.