Symphyotrichum firmum (purplestem aster)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Symphyotrichum firmum, photographed by Reuven Martin — fig. a Reuven Martin, CC0 1.0 / 2021-06-20 / obs. 137782254

Symphyotrichum firmum, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma — fig. b Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 97998494

Symphyotrichum firmum, photographed by Susan Blayney — fig. c Susan Blayney, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 100466068

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 10 botanical countries

Native distribution of Symphyotrichum firmum, 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.

Region	TDWG code	Continent
Alberta	ABT	NORTHERN AMERICA
Iowa	IOW
Manitoba	MAN
Michigan	MIC
Minnesota	MIN
Missouri	MSO
Nebraska	NEB
New York	NWY
Ontario	ONT
Saskatchewan	SAS

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 124 in flower of 133 examined

87%

100%

67%

Proportion of examined Symphyotrichum firmum in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	0	0	too few examined
Feb	0	0	too few examined
Mar	0	0	too few examined
Apr	0	0	too few examined
May	0	0	too few examined
Jun	0	1	too few examined
Jul	0	3	too few examined
Aug	13	15	87%	62% to 96%
Sep	105	105	100%	96% to 100%
Oct	6	9	67%	35% to 88%
Nov	0	0	too few examined
Dec	0	0	too few examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Symphyotrichum firmum 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. 124 of 133 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 9 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 firmus Nees
Aster lucidulus Wiegand
Aster lucidulus (A.Gray) Rydb.
Aster lucidulus f. lucidulus
Aster puniceus f. lucidulus (A.Gray) Fernald
Aster puniceus subsp. firmus (Nees) A.G.Jones
Aster puniceus var. albiflorus Farw.
Aster puniceus var. firmus (Nees) Torr. & A.Gray
Aster puniceus var. lucidulus A.Gray

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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.