BOLTONIA
File Size: 53 KB
 
Boltonia asteroides   (L. ) L'Her.
Cherokee County, Kansas
Perennial
Height: 12-60 inches
Family: Asteraceae - Sunflower Family
Flowering Period:   August, September,October
Also Called: White doll's daisy, false aster.
Stems: Erect, glabrous, longitudinally ridged, much branched above; branches spreading to ascending.
Leaves: Alternate, simple, mostly sessile, narrowly elliptic to lanceolate or linear, 4/5 to 6 inches long, 1/5 to 4/5 inch wide, progressively reduced above, glabrous; margins entire, slightly rough; tips pointed or long-tapering; lower leaves gone by flowering.
Inflorescences: Heads, several to many, 3/5 to 1.25 inches across, terminating branches; stalks 1/5 to 8.8 inches long; involucre hemispheric, 1/8 to 1/4 inch long; involucral bracts 0-15, overlapping in 3-5 series, narrow, spatulate to oblanceolate, 1/12 to 1/2 inch long; midribs dark; tips pointed or broadly spatulate with abrupt short-points; ray florets 20-60, .4 to .7 inch long, white to pale lilac or pink; disk florets 60-180, corollas yellow.
Fruits: Achene, wedge-shaped to egg-shaped, 1/12 to 1/10 inch long, flattened, tan to grayish-brown, surface often minutely hairy, wing-margined, tipped with 2-4 well-developed awns and a few minute bristles, enclosing small seed.
Habitat: Stream banks, margins of ponds and lakes, bottomland prairies, ditches, fallow fields, edges of crop fields, sandy disturbed areas; open damp or wet sites.
Distribution: East half of Kansas.
Origin: Native
Comments: Boltonia is sometimes planted as an ornamental. It is named after English botanist James Bolton, 1758-1799. Boltonia resembles our asters, but the pappus of its achenes differs. The pappus of Symphotrichum has many long, hair-like bristles.

Boltonia
119 KB
Cherokee County, Kansas
Boltonia heads
53 KB
Cherokee County, Kansas
Boltonia
111 KB
Cherokee County, Kansas
Boltonia leaf
45 KB
Cherokee County, Kansas
Boltonia
156 KB
Cherokee County, Kansas