So you’re driving along the same country road you were driving along last week when you saw a plant covered with deep purple flowers, but this time the plant’s flowers aren’t exactly deep purple. They’re lighter, more lavender, but equally as colorful and pleasing to the eye. 

Smooth aster gets its common name from its leaves, which are almost leathery to the touch (but smooth leather, like a calf). Like the New England Aster we talked about last week, Smooth aster’s leaves are shaped like elongated triangles that clasp the stem, but the leaf similarities end there. These leaves are very smooth, and not hairy. The stem may be reddish in color. Smooth aster’s flowers are shaped much like the New England aster’s flowers and are about the same size (about an inch in diameter), but the purple ray flowers around the yellow disk flowers at the center are much lighter in color. It starts to bloom in August, and continues through October, so we’ve still got some good weeks of color ahead of us.

Like the other asters, Smooth aster is a great source of nectar for bees and butterflies and if you have them in your yard, a sunny day is a buzz of activity. One of my favorite things to do now is go out in my yard in the later afternoon of a sunny day, where my asters and goldenrods are blooming, and face the west, so backlighting is in full effect. 

A convention of bees, flies, and an occasional moth is buzzing around, gathering nectar from the multitude of flowers on the plants. The backlighting especially helps see the little guys. I don’t know my insects very well, but it’s very rewarding to me to see the popularity of my garden amongst the critters that don’t have much of a voice. 

It’s also a good chance to show my daughters that bees really don’t want to sting them. They’re just after food, and if we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone because they’ve got better goals than just stinging us, like dinner.

Also like New England Aster, it is native to almost the entire eastern half of the United States and Canada, with only Florida being left out of the party. The USDA plant website shows its native range. I’m not sure if this is a positive or negative for the plant, but a Kansas Wildflowers website reports Native Americans used the smoke of burning Smooth aster to revive an unconscious person. I’m sure there were many other ethnobotanical uses for it, but my usual sources didn’t list any.

This plant also reaches about the same size as New England aster (about 3-5 feet). If you’re interested in using it in a landscape design that wouldn’t benefit from some late-season flow, or gangliness, I’d recommend hacking it back to one-half or one-third its height in June to provide the excellent blooms that make this an outstanding plant for your garden in a bushier form that will be about 3 feet or so in height.