Astarte

as-tar'te. See Ashtoreth; Baal

Aster (a star), an autumn flower of great beauty. Gray recognized fifty-four different asters east of the 100th meridian and north of the southern line of Virginia. Our Rocky Mountain region is full of them. Britton and Brown's Flora gives the number of species of asters as not less than 250, chiefly North American. England has but one aster, a salt marsh plant. China and Japan have many. One from far off Van Diemen's Land smells of musk. Most species are perennial herbs. A few are shrubby. American asters are of many colors and sizes. They belong to the composite family. What seems a flower is really a large number of flowers in a head. Close examination will show a large number of small flowers in the center, with an outer row of showy strap-shaped flowers, always of some other color. Our garden asters are from China. They are not true asters, but are near relatives. Asters are late flowers to bloom. They are exceedingly welcome in the sere days of autumn. Bryant in his Death of the Flowers speaks of them:

But on the hills the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.