Aster subulatusMichx.

eastern annual saltmarsh aster

WFO wfo-0000116793 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Aster subulatus, photographed by Dylan Wishart
fig. a Dylan Wishart, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 192593280

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
781664
Filed as
Aster subulatus var. sandwicensis (A.Gray ex H.Mann) A.G.Jones
Det. by
S. D. Sundberg 1986-01-01
Collected
P. K. H. Dusén 1909-01-19
Origin
BR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 32 botanical countries

Regions where Aster subulatus is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mexico Northeast, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica AlabamaArkansasConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMexico NortheastMichiganMississippiNebraskaNew BrunswickNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioOntarioPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTexasVirginiaDominican RepublicHaitiJamaica DelawareRhode I.Bahamas
Native distribution of Aster subulatus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Louisiana LOU
Maine MAI
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Mexico Northeast MXE
Michigan MIC
Mississippi MSI
Nebraska NEB
New Brunswick NBR
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
Bahamas BAH SOUTHERN AMERICA
Dominican Republic DOM
Haiti HAI
Jamaica JAM

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 456 in flower of 573 examined

Proportion of examined Aster subulatus in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 22 29 76% 58% to 88%
Feb 25 34 74% 57% to 85%
Mar 30 35 86% 71% to 94%
Apr 29 41 71% 56% to 82%
May 15 32 47% 31% to 64%
Jun 15 21 71% 50% to 86%
Jul 10 14 71% 45% to 88%
Aug 20 30 67% 49% to 81%
Sep 115 129 89% 83% to 93%
Oct 102 122 84% 76% to 89%
Nov 49 55 89% 78% to 95%
Dec 24 31 77% 60% to 89%

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Aster subulatus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 456 of 573 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 2,039 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -4.4 °C 9.3 °C 15.4 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.2 °C 29.6 °C 33.9 °C
Annual rainfall 310 mm 1,245 mm 3,573 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 4 mm 134 mm 589 mm

It is found where winters bring light frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,039 research-grade observations of Aster subulatus that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 8 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Aster flexicaulis Raf.
  • Aster linifolius Torr. & A.Gray
  • Aster subulatus var. euroauster Fernald & Griscom
  • Chrysocoma linifolia Steud.
  • Erigeron linifolius Bertero ex DC.
  • Symphyotrichum subulatum (Michx.) G.L.Nesom
  • Tripolium subulatum (Michx.) DC.
  • Tripolium subulatum var. subulatum

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol SYSU5. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.