Michaelmas daisy

Symphyotrichum novae-angliae is a robust herbaceous perennial of the daisy family growing 90-180 cm tall from a short stout rhizome. Stems are erect, stiff, densely hairy, and sometimes branched only in the inflorescence. Leaves are alternate, sessile, lanceolate to oblong, 5-12 cm long, with auriculate-clasping bases that wrap around the stem, entire margins, and rough hairs on both surfaces. The inflorescence is a leafy, terminal corymbose cluster of large, showy capitula 3-5 cm across; ray florets are 45-100 and typically deep violet-purple to rosy-pink (occasionally white in cultivars), surrounding a central disc of bright yellow tubular florets that age to reddish-purple. Involucral bracts are imbricate, narrow, conspicuously glandular and viscid, with spreading green tips. The fruits are flattened, pubescent achenes crowned by a single pappus of dull tawny bristles. Native to moist meadows, prairies, swamp edges, and roadsides across central and eastern North America, the species flowers from August into October.