the magazine y - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

While the flowering season has long since
passed on the desert lowlands, many of the species
are still in blossom on the hie her levels -
among them the aster which somewnat resembles
its cousin, the domestic aster. Here Mary Beal describes
some of the members of the wild aster family,
and tells where they may be found.
JHU
By MARY BEAL
rHE domestic aster that grows in your garden is a
pretty flower—but its civilized surrojndings have given
it no more beauty of color and fDrm than its wild
little cousin who lives a carefree life on the rocky hillsides of
the desert.
No sheltered prima donna is the Mojave aster—but a rugged
little hill-climber which chooses for its habitat the boulder-strewn
bajadas, precipitous slopes and hijh mesas between
(he 2000 and 6000-foot elevations.
Each sturdy perennial plant sends up a number of steins
a foot or two high, each ending in a single flower-head with
lavender or violet-purple rays surrounding a bright golden
center. Rather sparse and hairy is the gre/-green foliage, a
good background for the exquisite coloring of the blossoms.
If you know the large single aster of various hues now popular
in cultivation, you'll recognize the kinship of this wild
member of the family when you find it on rocky slopes in the
deserts of California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. Its time of
blooming depends on the elevation and season. If spring
comes early you may find it in March, but in normal seasons
not until April, or climbing the mountains in May. If the
season is late the asters may be seen in the higher elevations
well into June.
I hope you'll come upon some of its favorite haunts in California's
Mojave desert. I have x ound them especially plentiful
on the slopes of Ord mountain south ol Daggett and the
Providence mountains in the eastern Moja\e and out on the
Barstow-Cave Springs-Death Valley road. If you see even one
of these memorable displays you'll know hat aster time is
one of the delights of the desert spring tc look forward to
from year to year.
The other states also have their asters and below you'll
find the commoner species of the tribe and their range:
Aster tortifolius
(Listed as Aster abatus by some botanists)
A God-child to be proud of is the Mo ave aster. It is a
bushy perennial one to two feet high, the main structure
woody and shortly branched, dead-looking i ntil spring brings
forth from these grey old sticks several or many sparselyleafy
stems surmounted by long-stemmed flower-heads. The
grey-green herbage is covered with white-woolly hairs, its
softness offset by the spine-tipped teeth of he narrow leaves.
The lovely flowers are two inches or more icross, the numerous
clear lavender or violet-purple rays cen.ered by a golden
disk.
Many foothills and mountain slopes of I he Mojave desert
are ornamented by these attractive flower:,, which art also
Mojave aster (Aster tortifolius)
found in the northern Colorado desert, Inyo county desert
areas, Nevada and Utah.
Aster cognatus
The northern Colorado desert displays this beautiful species,
the Mecca aster, with flowers similar to the Mojave aster,
the rays somewhat broader. The plant itself is quite different,
more herbaceous and spreading widely. The shiny white
stems are leafy up to the heads with ovate or elliptic rather
dark blue-green glistening leaves, the margins spiny-toothed,
sparsely dotted with minute white glandular hairs. The
flowers measure about two inches across, the disk bright
yellow and the rays light violet or bluish, the involucral
bracts with conspicuously long, tapering tips.
Painted canyon is adorned by especially fine plants, occupying
low benches at the base of the walls, and other canyons
around Mecca also take front rank with their aster output.
Aster orcuttii
A rarer, very lovely species, much like the Mecca aster is
found in the southern Colorado desert. Its white stems are
leafy up to an inch or two of the flower-heads, the herbage
not at all hairy and the leaves somewhat spiny-toothed. The
beautiful lavender or purple flowers are often two and a half
inches across, the largest of all desert asters, truly prizewinners.
Aster canescens
Not a shrub the Pinon aster, but a herbaceous biennial
or perennial with one to several grey-green leafy stems from
the base, often branching, six inches to over two feet high.
The herbage is somewhat hairy and the flower panicle glandular.
The violet or blue-purple flowers, with few rays or none,
are less than an inch across, the bracts noticeably green-tipped.
Found in ranges of the eastern Mojave desert and Arizona,
in the Pirion belt above 5000 feet. The variety tephrodes is
quite hairy, has larger flowers with the green tips of the
bracts very long and tapering. It grows at lower elevations
from the southern Colorado desert to Nevada and Arizona.
Aster spinosus
Here is a different type of aster, with characteristics that
have earned the name Mexican devilweed. This black sheep
of the tribe sends up a slender stem with reedy branches, from
30 The DESERT M A G A Z I N E