Sericocarpus asteroides(L.) Britton, Sterns & Poggenb.

toothed whitetop aster

WFO wfo-0000129417 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Sericocarpus asteroides, photographed by Alan Weakley
fig. a Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / 2021-06-30 / obs. 140864736
Sericocarpus asteroides, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan
fig. b Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 64779644
Sericocarpus asteroides, photographed by Zihao Wang
fig. c Zihao Wang, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 169943215
Sericocarpus asteroides, photographed by Anne Parker
fig. d Anne Parker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203025739
Sericocarpus asteroides, photographed by Alan Kneidel
fig. e Alan Kneidel, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 49201766
Sericocarpus asteroides, photographed by Anne Parker
fig. f Anne Parker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205020263
Sericocarpus asteroides, photographed by Anne Parker
fig. g Anne Parker, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203978169
Sericocarpus asteroides, photographed by Alan Weakley
fig. h Alan Weakley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201375776

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.

Native range 15 botanical countries

Regions where Sericocarpus asteroides is native: Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode I., South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia ConnecticutMaineMarylandMassachusettsNew HampshireNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaVermontVirginia DelawareDistrict of ColumbiaRhode I.
Native distribution of Sericocarpus asteroides, 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
Connecticut CNT NORTHERN AMERICA
Delaware DEL
District of Columbia WDC
Maine MAI
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
New Hampshire NWH
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Pennsylvania PEN
Rhode I. RHO
South Carolina SCA
Vermont VER
Virginia VRG

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 175 in flower of 210 examined

Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Sericocarpus asteroides 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. 175 of 210 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. 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.

Also published as 4 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 asteroides MacMill.
  • Aster paternus Cronquist
  • Conyza asteroides L.
  • Sericocarpus asteroides (L.) Nees

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 SEAS3. 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.