Plants robust. Involucres campanulate, 5.5-7.5 mm. Phyllaries in 4-5 series, squarrose, acute to acuminate, sparsely strigillose, densely stipitate-glandular; mid 1-1.2 mm wide. 2n = 10, 20.
Flowering (Aug-)Sept-Nov(-Dec). Sandy, loamy, shaley, or clayey soils, dry woods, open oak and pine woods, fields, roadsides, disturbed habitats; 0-100+ m; Ala., Ark., Conn., Del., D.C., Fla., Ga., Ill., Ind., Kans., Ky., La., Maine, Md., Mass., Miss., Mo., N.H., N.J., N.Y., N.C., Ohio, Okla., Pa., R.I., S.C., Tenn., Tex., Va., W.Va.
Variety patens is found in the southern Central Lowland, the Appalachian Mountains, the Piedmont, and the Coastal Plains. Aster patens forma rosea Svenson is a color morph that is not recognized here.
Plants with a short caudex, sometimes with creeping rhizomes as well; stems rather slender and brittle, 2-15 dm, shortly and loosely hairy; lvs ±hairy or scabrous, at least beneath, sessile and conspicuously cordate-clasping, broadly ovate to oblong, entire, 2.5-15 נ0.8-4.5 cm, the lower soon deciduous; heads few to rather numerous in an open, divaricately branched infl; invol 5-9 mm, its bracts well imbricate, mostly acute, ±glandular or short-hairy or both; rays 15-25 (-30), blue (pink), 8-15 mm; achenes shortly sericeous; 2n=10, 20. Woods and dry, open places; Mass. and s. N.H. to s. Mich. and Kans., s. to Fla. and Tex. Four vars.:
Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.
Local in the southwestern part of the state on the crests of open, wooded ridges, usually with black and white oak or in very sandy soil on wooded, sandy knolls and terraces. None of my specimens have the pedicels, small branches, or small leaves of the branches glandular. The inflorescences vary from those with the branches terminating in a single head to those with 20-25 heads. The leaves are also variable. In one specimen the leaves are narrowed at the base into a margined, clasping petiole.
