Wednesday, October 21, 2009

so many fall asters

aster 1 aster 2
aster 3 aster 4
aster 5 aster 8
aster 10 aster 11
aster 14 aster 15
aster 13 aster 6

One one of our walks this week, I tried to photograph every type of aster I saw. I've heard that there are hundreds of varieties of wild native fall-blooming asters. One of the last plants to bloom and one of the loveliest. They are covered with bees. Blankets of whites, blues and pinks under the falling leaves. Profusion. Prodigality.

© Skippy's Vegetable Garden

6 comments:

Noelle Johnson said...

Hello,

What a beautiful collection of asters. I think I like the small white ones best. They look so delicate.

Jain said...

Some are familiar in Ohio, others I've never seen. Thanks for posting these!

kathy said...

Hard to get accurate sense of size difference here. Small ones at the top right are very tiny compared to others.

Hard to have a favorite, but I find the white ones with the long thin petals and bright yellow centers are very interesting. These may have the fewest number of petals.

Wikipedia says "One notable thing about this flower is that its number of petals is a Fibonacci Number." Now what's a Fibonacci Number?

Marian(LondonUK) said...

I haven't seen the one with the long white petals before. The bees love them don't they, we have a couple of the purple/yellow centred ones just outside the Workshop Door they have been busy with bees.

The Fibonacci thing, I don't if it is linked but I remember from school science (thirty years ago) that some maths/algebra or geometry could be used to explain the regular formation of petal heads as well as other stuff in nature??

Marian(LondonUK)

Anonymous said...

In the Fibonacci series, each number is the sum of the previous two. Thus: 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 ...

I have mounds of white and lilac aster on my hillside, and the honeybees seem to adore them. There's a few other kinds of bees, too. For instance, that's a syrphid fly on the last aster.

Victoria B. said...

It seems late but as of this date (Oct. 25) we have not gotten a hard freeze here. It must be global warming. We still have our petunias, geraniums, and lobelia blooming in pots in front of the house. What a late fall!!