A more contemplative sort of goldenrod. Its showier cousins brighten fields and meadows, but the Wreath or Blue-Stemmed Goldenrod is happiest in an open woodland, thriving in deeper shade than almost any other other fall flower. Its arched stems of golden flowers have a restrained elegance that seems appropriate to the dim religious light of the woods. This plant grew beside a forest path near West Newton.

From Gray’s Manual of Botany: S. caesia L. Smooth; at length much branched and diffuse; leaves lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, serrate, pointed, sessile; heads in very short clusters, or somewhat racemose-panicled on the branches. Deciduous woods, s. Me. to Ont., Minn., and southw. Aug.-Oct.

Now Symphyotrichum novae-angliae. This is the rare white form of the New England Aster. White asters of other species are a dime a dozen, but the New England Aster is usually purple or violet, uncommonly pink, and quite rarely white. Found in a roadside meadow near West Newton.

Now Symphyotrichum novae-angliae. Our showiest native aster, with many cultivated varieties bred for color and habit. The wild ones are somehow more beautiful, perhaps because in some way they are more true. These were found in a roadside meadow near West Newton, where at least four species of aster grew together with joyful abandon.

North American asters have been moved wholesale by botanists to the euphonious genus Symphyotrichum, but if they were listed here under that name no one would find them.

From Gray’s Manual of Botany: A. novae-angliae L7* Stem stout, hairy, 0.5-2.6 m. high, corymbed at the summit ; leaves numerous, lanceolate, entire, acute, auriculate-clasping, clothed with minute pubescence, 0.5-1 dm. long; bracts nearly equal, linear-awl-shaped, loose, glandular-viscid, as well as the branchlets;  rays violet-purple, rarely white, very numerous; achenes hairy. Moist chiefly calcareous grounds, centr. Me. to w. Que., westw. and southw. Aug.-Oct. Heads large; a very handsome species, popular in cultivation. (Escaped
from gardens, and locally naturalized in Eu.)

It’s so common that we hardly see it, but Canada Goldenod is a breathtakingly spectacular flower, much appreciated in European gardens. Americans often unjustly blame it for hay fever, when in fact it is the nearly invisible ragweeds, with their unremarkable green flowers that bloom alongside the goldenrods, that are the culprits. Here a Canada Goldenrod grows from a crack in the pavement beside a vacant building in Oakmont, where goldenrods, asters, thoroughworts, and evening primroses have formed a more artistic border than any human gardener could have conceived.

Goldenrods are notoriously difficult to sort out, with dozens of species fading into one another. Our identification is probable but not certain.

From Gray’s Manual of Botany: S. canadensis L. Stem rather slender, 0.3-1.5 m. high, glabrous at least below, often minutely pubescent above; leaves narrowly lanceolate, thin, glabrous above, minutely pubescent on the nerves beneath, mostly sharp-serrate, the middle ones 6-13 cm. long, 5-18 mm. wide; heads tiny, crowded in recurved racemes and forming dense broadly pyramidal panicles; pedicels strongly pilose; involucral bracts linear, mostly attenuate, greenish-straw-color. (Var. glabrata Porter.) Thickets and rich open soil, Nfd. to N. Dak., s. to W. Va. and Ky. July-Sept.