Thank you for buying a native plant from Windflower Native Plant Nursery. Your purchase helps create a bit of Montana natural history in your own yard as well as restore a piece of native Montana. This plant was grown by seed collected in an ethical manner.    

Showy Aster
(Aster conspicuus)

Common Name: Showy Aster
Scientific Name: Aster conspicuus
Family: Aster or Composite
Plant color: blue to violet ray flowers
Plant height: 12-40 inches
Bloom time: more of a late summer to fall bloomer

 

Native habitat: Widespread and common at low to mid elevations in moist to dry open forests, openings, and meadows

Aster means star, perhaps referring it the flower’s shape. Conspicuus means easily seen, marked, or conspicuous. This aster is easily recognized when it is blooming but the leaves are more often easily ignored or “inconspicuous”.

This aster makes a good ground cover. Rub the rough leaves, in the spring to bring out a light and delicate scent.

Aster and daisies, how does one tell them apart? Generally asters bloom later in the summer or fall while daisies or fleabanes, another name for daisies, tend to bloom in the spring or early summer. The ray flowers of daisies (fleabanes) tend to be more numerous and narrower than asters. A very general, simplified way to tell them apart is:

The Okanagan name for this aster is “shuffling noise” which describes the rattling sound the dry leaves make in the fall. Aster conspicuus is eaten by elk in the fall and winter.

A medicinal plant native people soaked the root in water to make a soak for sores, boils and infections. A rinse for eye problems was made by soaking the flowers.

Look for this plant sprouting and blooming in our recent wildfire burns.

Windflower Native Plant Nursery
PO Box 306
West Glacier, MT 59936
1.406.387.5527
www.windflowernativeplants.com