This week, I’m featuring New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) as one of our local wildflowers that begins to bloom at this time.
PLEASE NOTE: Culturally Significant Plant = Ethnobotanic Uses: The plant was used by many American Indian tribes for medicinal purposes, especially to treat fevers. Read more.
New England Aster was an important plant used to make dyes. The natural color is a yellow-green, which can become a permanent dye with the use of alum as a mordant (substance that combines with a dye and thereby fixes it in a material). However, there are many colors available from just this one plant and each is determined by the mordant selected. The stems, leaves and flowers of asters will produce a brassy gold with a chrome mordant, a greenish-gold with a copper mordant, a bright yellow-gold with a tin mordant, and a dark grey-green with an iron mordant.
Among the Chippewa (Ojibwe) nation, the powdered root was smoked to attract wildlife for hunting.
Among the Potawatomi nation, the entire plant was used as a fumigant in the long house; for the Lakota, it was similarly used but instead employed in their purification ceremony conducted in a sweat lodge. Among the Meskwaki and the Fox nations, the flowers and leaves were smudged in the sweat lodge to revive the unconscious and also to treat mental illness.
Identification Tips:
New England Asters grow up to 4′ tall, consisting of a central stem that is mostly unbranched, but may branch occasionally near the top. The stems are stout and hairy. The alternate leaves are up to 4″ long and 1″ wide, becoming smaller as they ascend the flowering stems. They are lanceolate or oblong and clasp the stem at the base of each leaf. Margins of leaves are smooth and leaves are spicy scented when crushed.
New England Aster leaves
Clusters of composite flowers occur at the ends of the upper stems and each composite flower contains numerous gold or yellow disk small flowers (called florets), which are surrounded by 30 or more ray florets that are purple, lavender, or light pink. Each composite flower has no noticeable scent and is about 1½” wide. An individual plant may exhibit more than two dozen of these composite flowers making New England Aster one of the showiest of all asters. Lower leaves are often withering by the time of flowering due to the lateness of the season.
Fertilized small flowers give way to achenes (small, dry one-seeded fruits that do not open) that are longitudinally ribbed and slightly hairy and each has a tuft of hair that enables it to be carried off in the wind.
Folklore:
In the Language of Flowers, aster symbolizes patience, love of variety, elegance and daintiness.
The Iroquois of northeastern North America used the plant as a love medicine.
Culinary and Medicinal Uses:
Fresh flowers and fresh leaves (which are aromatic) can be added to salads.
North American Indian tribes relied on this plant for a variety of medicinal uses. A root tea was used for treatment of fever and diarrhea. The flowers and leaves were used to treat nosebleeds, headaches and congestion. More specifically –
- Among the Cherokee, a poultice of the roots for pain, an infusion of the roots for diarrhea, sniffing the ooze from the roots for catarrh (excessive build-up of mucus in an airway).
- Root exudates were sniffed by the Cherokee for catarrh.
- The root was also used by the Cherokee in a tea for diarrhea and as a poultice for pain.
- Both the Cherokee and the Mohawk used the whole plant as an infusion to treat fever.
- Among the Iroquois, a decoction (extraction by boiling plant material to dissolve the chemicals therein) of the plant for weak skin, a decoction of the roots and leaves for fevers.
- Both the Iroquois and the Mohawks used an infusion of the whole plant and rhizomes from Panicled Aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum) to treat fever in the intestines of mothers.
The species was also used as a decoction internally, with a strong decoction externally, in many eruptive diseases of the skin including contact dermatitis caused by Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) and Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix).
Shakers used the plant to help clear skin complexions and as an antidote for snake bites.
Modern herbalists place aster blossoms in a pan of boiling water to use steam inhalation to treat congestion. Doing so is reputed to also be anti-asthmatic and antispasmodic for lung tissue, thereby relaxing and dilating the respiratory passages.
Wildlife Value:
The flowers are visited primarily by bees, bee flies, butterflies (including Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) and American Coppers (Lycaena phlaeas)), and skippers. Short-tongued bees and Syrphid flies (Sphaerophoria philanthus) visit the flowers, but they collect pollen primarily and are non-pollinating. New England Aster is heavily visited by long-tongued bumblebees like Bombus fervidus and Bombus vagans. Other long-tongued bee visitors include Honeybees (Apis mellifera), Miner Bees (Anthophora abrupta), large leaf-cutting bees (such as Alfalfa Leafcutter (Megachile rotundata) and Broad-handed Leafcutter (Megachile latimanus), and Melissodes druriella. New England Aster serves as the larval host of Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) and Checkerspot butterflies (such as Baltimore Checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton)).
The seeds and leaves of this plant are eaten to a limited extent by Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), while White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and rabbits occasionally browse on the foliage, sometimes eating the entire plant. This plant serves as an important fall and winter seed source for a variety of songbirds.
Where Found Locally: