Smooth Blue Aster Seeds (Symphyotrichum laeve)

Smooth blue aster is a beautiful slow growing native fall bloomer. Long-lived and cold hardy. It’s a plant with almost continent-wide distribution, occurring from northern New England to the inland Pacific Northwest, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Basin.

While people mostly take note of the profuse flower drifts of this multi-stemmed plant – ranging from pale pink to sky blue blossoms (but most often a pure light lavender) – fewer people take note of the namesake smooth and sturdy blue-green stems. The plant in its entirety is visually quite nice.  

Smooth blue aster is adaptable to many locations from slightly wet to slightly dry, and in our experience, it has a distinctive preference for sandy-loam soils across the board. It’s a host plant for several butterflies including the pearly crescent (Phyciodes tharos) and silvery checkerspot (Chlosyne nycteis). It’s a plant for late season bees (fall leafcutters in particular). 

The various plant guides tend to note that smooth blue aster can achieve a respectable height a bit over 36-inches tall, but we tend to see it remaining relatively shorter, at about 24-inches or less. And, it maintains a more upright growth habitat than many native asters (which tend to get leggy then flop over). Moreover, like other members of its genus, smooth blue aster responds to late spring pruning (i.e. cutting the plants back to about 6-inches in height in early June) by growing into a shorter, dense, bushy plant. Such pruning also tends to produce even more robust flowering than untrimmed asters. This is a great trick to keep in mind if you want to control vegetative height while still maximizing color and wildlife value. 

While this is a slow growing plant, it is somewhat rhizomatous. This allows for mature plants to be dug and divided – the best time for this is immediately after flowering in late, late autumn. It’s a slow process, but worth the investment. A field of smooth blue aster is an exceptional sight. 

100 to 200+ Seeds (0.5 grams).