Sky Blue Aster

Sky Blue Aster

Sky Blue Aster was a Brooklyn-based clothing company that just earlier this year announced its closure in order to focus on its true passion: a new product called WrinkleWand.A Prairie Moon • November 6 Asters in general will dump a lot of seeds when they are healthy, so the potential is always there for many seedlings. The seeds are wind dispersed so they may or may not settle in the area around the mother plants. Many factors contribute to the number of successful seedlings, such as how open the area is for new seeds to colonize.Sky Blue Aster has blue to blue-violet flowers. It is easy to grow and is drought tolerant. Blooming late summer to fall, like most Asters, it attracts butterflies and other beneficial insects such as small bees, flies, small to medium-sized butterflies, skippers, and wasps.

Aster

Flowers have two types of florets - an outer group of 13 to 20+ ray florets which have light blue to pinkish rays, 1/2 to 1-1/3 inches across the open head. These are pistillate and fertile. These surround the tubular central disc florets which have yellow corollas and number 20 to 25+. These are bisexual and fertile. The disc florets have 5 triangular lobes on the open throats and turn color toward reddish-purple at pollen maturity - typical of asters of this genus. Disc florets open from the edge of the central disc first then toward the center. The anthers of the disc floret stamens are yellow when the floret opens, and the five stamens tightly surround the style which has a branched appendage at its tip. Styles are exserted from the corolla when the flower opens. Flower stalk bracts are green, linear and usually appressed to the stalk.

These grade into 4 to 6 series of phyllaries around the outside of the flowerhead. These too, are usually appressed but the outer series may be slightly spreading or even curled. They are generally whitish but have a short, dark green, diamond shape tip and are without hair.Names: That strange species name, oolentangiense, refers to the Oolentangy River in Ohio where Riddell, who named the plant, found the species in 1835. Its former scientific name was Aster oolentangiensis Riddell. Another older name, but the most descriptive, is Aster azureus, which species name means 'sky-blue'. However, all the new world asters, formerly in the genus Aster, have now been reclassified, most into the genus Symphyotrichum. That genus name is from the Greek symphysis, for 'junction', and 'trichos', for hair and, while obscure, it was first applied by Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck in the 1800s in describing the type aster for the genus. (Source:www.friendsofthewildflowergarden.org)