海角大神

When working as a children鈥檚 librarian years ago, I came across a native American legend about two girls, one dressed in purple, one in gold. Survivors of a besieged village, they escaped to an herbalist with magic powers who, foreseeing that the girls would be killed, turned them into flowers 鈥� the aster and the goldenrod 鈥� so they could avoid their fate and remain together forever.

I鈥檝e lost track of the story, but the aster and the goldenrod still appear every autumn, dressing up pastures and trimming roadsides. Goldenrod, considered too aggressive for gardens, was left in the wild until quite recently, when became available.

But our colonial forerunners transplanted asters into their borders and beds, and sent them back across the Atlantic, where they were crossed and recrossed until seen as genteel enough to be worthy of a place in the garden.

Like those early varieties, most of the fall-blooming asters sold today are the consequence of hybridizing the New England aster (formerly Aster novae-angliae, now Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) and the New York aster (formerly A. novi-belgii, now Symphyotrichum novi-belgii).

Their new taxonomic assignment, Symphyotrichum, is a result of that left "Old World鈥� asters as asters. but moved all but one North American asters into other genera.

The consensus is that the new genus name is pronounced sim-fy-oh-TRY-kum, an appellation that doesn鈥檛 exactly roll off the lips. Poems aren鈥檛 the same when 鈥渟im-fy-oh-TRY-kum鈥� is substituted for 鈥渁ster.鈥� The change comes from the same experts who changed Chrysanthemum to Dendranthema and then back to Chrysanthemum, and turned Coleus blumei, good old painted nettle, to Solenostemon scutellarioides. Try saying that three times fast. Or slow.

Fortunately, these taxonomists meet only every five years.

But back to asters. Our natives tend to be tall and a bit weedy, but their hybrid offspring retain their parents鈥� vigor, grow more compactly, bloom more generously, and sport colors not seen in roadside ditches. While there are fine tall cultivars, I like the shorter types, plants in the 12- to 18-inch range. I hate staking plants, so over the years I鈥檝e stayed with compacts, including the blue old-timer 鈥楶rofessor Kippenburg鈥�, white 鈥楽now Cushion鈥�, 鈥榃ood鈥檚 Blue鈥�, 鈥楶urple Dome鈥�, and 鈥楲ady-in-Blue鈥�.

We have moved to a property with plenty of sun, which is the essential to growing asters, so I鈥檓 going to track down other cultivars that won鈥檛 blow over in the winds that come off Lake Champlain. (A quick Google suggests there are plenty of candidates.)

Some shorter varieties are susceptible to powdery mildew, a fungus that makes that the plant look as if it鈥檚 been sprinkled with flour. But tall asters. too, are susceptible to powdery mildew, and nearly always must be shored up, and often lose their lower leaves, exposing their ungainly ankles. Choose your poison.

For the record, there is an all-gold aster, A. linosyris, a native of the British Isles commonly known as Goldilocks. But no historically sensitive American gardener would grow this green alien: Gold, the legend tells us, belongs to the aster鈥檚 childhood companion, the goldenrod.

Karan Davis Cutler, a former magazine editor and newspaper columnist, is the author of scores of garden articles and more than a dozen books, including 鈥淏urpee - The Complete Flower Gardener鈥� and 鈥淗erb Gardening for Dummies.鈥� She now struggles to garden in the unyieldingly dense clay of Addison County, Vermont, on the shore of Lake Champlain, where she is working on a book about gardening to attract birds and other wildlife. She will be blogging regularly for Diggin鈥� It.

Editor鈥檚 note: To read more posts by Karan, see our . The Monitor鈥檚 main gardening page offers articles on many gardening topics. See also our . You may want to visit . Take part in and get answers to your gardening questions. If you join the group (it鈥檚 free), you can upload your garden photos and enter our next contest.