Plants with a short caudex or crown, often with creeping rhizomes as well; stems slender, 3-10 dm, simple or sparingly branched, thinly sericeous or sometimes merely strigose, rarely spreading-villous, glabrate below; lvs sericeous, sometimes glabrate in age, entire, the lower soon deciduous, the others sessile and broad-based but not strongly clasping, lanceolate or oblong to broadly elliptic, to 5 נ1.5 cm; infl narrow and racemiform, or occasionally with racemiform branches, the peduncles minutely bracteate; invol 5-9 mm, densely and finely sericeous, its bracts narrower and more imbricate than in no. 25 [Aster sericeus Vent.]; rays 8-16, blue (pink), 7-12 mm; achenes densely sericeous, the pubescence obscuring the nerves; 2n=8, 16. Dry sandy places, often among pines; coastal states from Mass. to Fla. and La., and up the Mississippi embayment to sw. Tenn.; less commonly inland in the mts. of Ky. and Tenn.
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
