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aster, tall flat-top aster, whitetop

Habit Perennials, 40–200 cm (rhizomatous or with short woody crowns).
Stems

erect, simple, glabrous or sparsely strigose, eglandular.

Leaves

basal and cauline; alternate;

sessile;

basal withering, oblanceolate;

proximal cauline sometimes withering, reduced;

mid cauline blades (1-nerved, venation brochidodromous) lanceolate to elliptic (little reduced distally, much reduced in arrays), margins entire, faces glabrate to moderately short-woolly or strigose.

Involucres

cylindro-campanulate (3–6.8 ×) 1.8–4.6 mm.

Receptacles

slightly convex, pitted, epaleate.

Ray florets

2–10(–16), pistillate, fertile;

corollas white.

Disc florets

4–25(–50), bisexual, fertile;

corollas pale yellow, ampliate, tubes shorter than throats, lobes 5, often spreading to reflexed, deltate (2–4.2 mm);

style-branch appendages narrowly lanceolate (papillate on at least distal 1/2).

Phyllaries

16–40 in 3–5 series (erect), 1-nerved, (midnerves raised, sometimes brownish and translucent, not keeled), lanceolate to deltate, unequal, pliable to rigid, margins narrowly scarious, dark green zone restricted to narrow bands along midnerves, apices rounded, glabrate to moderately strigose, sometimes strigose distally.

Heads

radiate, (3–300) in flat-topped corymbiform arrays.

Cypselae

terete to narrowly obconic, sometimes somewhat compressed (bases distinctly stipitate), 4–10-ribbed (ribs darkened, translucent, sometimes resinous), glabrous, eglandular, sometimes resinous;

pappi persistent in 4 series, whitish outer of linear to subulate, short (5–15 % length inner) scales, 3 inner of 60–90 white to tan, barbellate bristles, outer apically attenuate, innermost clavate.

x

= 9.

Doellingeria

Distribution
from USDA
e North America
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Species 3 (3 in the flora).

Doellingeria is one of the genera of North American asters that sometimes has been treated as separate from Aster in a broad sense. J. C. Semple et al. (1991) recognized four species in their study of Aster sect. Triplopappus; G. L. Nesom (1993c) is followed here in excluding Oclemena reticulata. Semple et al. (2002) are followed here by excluding all eastern Asian species from the genus. Semple and J. L. A. Hood (2005) noted that the pappus of Doellingeria includes four distinct whorls of bristles, not three as had been thought since the first Flora of North America.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

Key
1. Branches of arrays and peduncles leafless or nearly so, branches flexuous, heads 3–40(–67); cypselae glabrous; Appalachian Mountains, Piedmont, and adjacent plateaus, to n Florida
D. infirma
1. Branches of arrays and peduncles short, leafy, not flexuous, heads (3–)20–100(–300+); cypselae glabrous or densely strigose.
→ 2
2. Cypselae sparsely to densely strigose; rays (2–)5–16; leaves broadly to narrowly elliptic; phyllary midveins not swollen; e North America
D. umbellata
2. Cypselae glabrous or sparsely strigose; rays 2–7; leaves lanceolate to ovate, stiff, margins involute to weakly revolute, sparsely hairy; phyllary midveins somewhat swollen apically; New Jersey to c Gulf states, Arkansas and Texas
D. sericocarpoides
Source FNA vol. 20, p. 43. Authors: John C. Semple, Jerry G. Chmielewski.
Parent taxa Asteraceae > tribe Astereae
Subordinate taxa
D. infirma, D. sericocarpoides, D. umbellata
Synonyms Aster section D., Aster subg. D., Aster section Triplopappus, Diplopappus unranked Triplopappus
Name authority Nees: Gen. Sp. Aster., 10, 177. (1832)
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