Aspen daisy

Erigeron speciosus, the aspen daisy or showy fleabane, is a leafy perennial herb of the family Asteraceae growing from a woody caudex and short rhizomes to heights of up to 100 cm. Stems are erect, smooth or sparsely hairy, and clothed in numerous well-spaced, lanceolate to oblong, three-veined leaves that diminish only slightly upward; the basal leaves often wither by flowering. Each stem typically bears between two and twenty showy flower heads in a loose corymb, the involucral bracts narrow and glandular. Each head has 75 to 150 narrow ray florets in shades of white, lavender, pink or violet-blue surrounding a dense disc of many yellow tubular florets, producing the daisy-like effect that gives the species its name speciosus, meaning pretty. Flowering occurs from June through October. The fruits are small ribbed achenes tipped by a single bristly pappus. The species occurs in open coniferous forests across western North America from British Columbia and Alberta south to Arizona and New Mexico, with disjunct populations in Baja California.