Flora of North America species comparison

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Chloracantha

chloracantha, spiny aster
Habit Perennials or subshrubs (commonly appearing herbaceous), 50–150(–250) cm, sometimes glaucous, glabrous or glabrate (forming large clones; stoutly rhizomatous).
Stems

erect (strict), lateral branches sharply ascending, often modified to thorns.
Leaves

cauline (early withering); alternate;

sessile;

blades 1-nerved, oblanceolate, margins entire or rarely with 1–2 pairs of small teeth.
Involucres

broadly turbinate to hemispheric, 4.5–7.5 × 5–6 mm.
Receptacles

shallowly convex, smooth, epaleate.
Ray florets

20–33 in 1(–2) series, pistillate, fertile;

corollas white (coiling at maturity).
Disc florets

(13–)20–70, bisexual, fertile;

corollas yellow (with orange resin ducts), tubes 2 times longer than narrowly funnelform throats, lobes 5, erect to spreading, deltate;

style-branch appendages acute to deltate.
Phyllaries

20–55 in 4–5 series, (1–)3(–5) parallel-nerved (nerves orange-resinous; flat), oblong-elliptic to lanceolate, unequal, margins hyaline (apices rounded to lanceolate), faces glabrous.
Heads

radiate, borne singly in loose corymbo-paniculiform arrays.
Cypselae

fusiform-cylindric, slightly compressed, 5(–6)-nerved, faces glabrous;

pappi persistent, of 30–60 tawny, barbellate, apically attenuate bristles in 1–2 series, usually plus shorter outer setae.
x

= 9.

Chloracantha
Distribution
from USDA
sw United States; w Mexico; Central America
[BONAP county map]
Discussion

Species 1.

Chloracantha spinosa produces no terminal resting buds and its evergreen stems without periderm look herbaceous, but it behaves more like a subshrub in its perennial stems (alive for up to four growing seasons) with a quickly developed vascular cambium and production of axillary buds with bud scales. All or almost all of the leaves are usually shed by flowering and the colonies become masses of erect, green stems with loosely paniculiform arrays of small, terminal, white-rayed heads. Geographic variation within C. spinosa has been studied in detail by S. D. Sundberg (1991), who provided a treatment of its infraspecific taxonomy and discussions of typification problems.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 20, p. 358. Authors: Scott D. Sundberg†, Guy L. Nesom.
Parent taxa Asteraceae > tribe Astereae
Subordinate taxa
C. spinosa
Synonyms Aster section Spinosi, Erigeron section Spinosi
Name authority G. L. Nesom: Phytologia 70: 378. (1991)
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



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