Symphyotrichum simmondsii (Simmonds' aster)

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Symphyotrichum simmondsii, photographed by Sawyer Baran — fig. a Sawyer Baran, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-11 / obs. 196875215

Symphyotrichum simmondsii, photographed by Josiah Londerée — fig. b Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 177544719

Symphyotrichum simmondsii, photographed by Ben Machado — fig. c Ben Machado, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 110866296

Symphyotrichum simmondsii, photographed by juniem — fig. d juniem, CC0 1.0 / obs. 171372668

Symphyotrichum simmondsii, photographed by Jared Shorma — fig. e Jared Shorma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197952850

Symphyotrichum simmondsii, photographed by Jade Fortnash — fig. f Jade Fortnash, CC0 1.0 / obs. 179963514

Symphyotrichum simmondsii, photographed by Liz F — fig. g Liz F, CC0 1.0 / obs. 177051210

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 3 botanical countries

Native distribution of Symphyotrichum simmondsii, 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
Florida	FLA	NORTHERN AMERICA
North Carolina	NCA
South Carolina	SCA

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 65 in flower of 68 examined

100%

86%

89%

100%

Proportion of examined Symphyotrichum simmondsii in flower, by month
Month	In flower	Examined	Share	95% interval
Jan	11	11	100%	74% to 100%
Feb	6	7	86%	49% to 97%
Mar	2	2	too few examined
Apr	0	0	too few examined
May	2	2	too few examined
Jun	0	0	too few examined
Jul	0	0	too few examined
Aug	0	0	too few examined
Sep	0	0	too few examined
Oct	0	0	too few examined
Nov	17	19	89%	69% to 97%
Dec	27	27	100%	88% to 100%

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Symphyotrichum simmondsii 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. 65 of 68 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 2 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 simmondsii Small
Aster sulznerae Small

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.