• Symphyotrichum novae-angliae (New England Aster) native plant in bloom
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Symphyotrichum novae-angliae (New England Aster)

Symphyotrichum novae-angliae (New England Aster)

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New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) produces purple to pink-purple flowers with yellow centers in late summer and fall. Its tall, leafy clumps are useful toward the back of a sunny border or in a moist meadow, where late-season flowers remain visible above lower plants.

Plant it in full sun with moist, well-drained soil. Clay loam can be suitable when it does not stay poorly drained. Good air circulation helps reduce leaf-disease problems, including powdery mildew, but it is not a guarantee of unmarked foliage.

In a garden, pinching stems in spring can make plants bushier and delay flowering. Leave them unpinched for the natural tall habit, with support where needed. Bees and butterflies visit the late flowers. Allow room for an established clump rather than placing it immediately beside a small plant that will be shaded by its summer growth.

Plant specifications & ecological relationships

Key growing facts

Sunlight Full to partial sun
Soil moisture Moist to average
Height Up to 4 ft
Bloom season Late summer to fall

Native landscape companions

For full sun and mesic soil, consider these native plants alongside Symphyotrichum novae-angliae:

Companion plant Height
Yellow Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) Up to 4 ft
Nodding Bulrush or Rufous Bulrush (Scirpus pendulus) 2–3½ ft
Wild Bergamot / Bee Balm (Monarda fistulosa) 2½–4 ft
Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) About 2-4 ft

These landscape suggestions combine overlapping growing needs with documented plant associations. Match soil, seasonal wetness and mature spread to your site. Remnant records are described separately under Plant communities & associates.

Show / hide ▾Growing & planting details
Growth habit Readily colonizes disturbed areas
Root form Fibrous roots; Rhizomes
Cultivation hardiness zones Zones 4a–8b (general cultivation guidance)
Deer browsing Deer sometimes browse heavily enough to remove the plant.

Plant identification & seed reference

Botanical name Symphyotrichum novae-angliae
Other common names new england aster; New England Aster
Plant family Asteraceae

Plant characteristics

Large purple daisy flowers with yellow centers cover New England Aster in late summer. A large, bushy aster, it can reach around five feet high. New England Aster may also sport lavender or light pink blossoms. It's commonly found in prairies and savannas and tolerates a wide range of soils. Asters are key pollinator plants that provide a welcome source of late-season nectar. Numerous moths use them as larval hosts.

  • Flower Color Violet
  • Flower Time August, September, October

    • Show / hide ▾Plant communities & associates

    Illinois plant communities

    Mesic black-soil prairie — central Illinois

    Recorded at Loda Cemetery Prairie (Iroquois County), Prospect Cemetery Prairie (Ford County). INHS identifies these sites as remnants of this community.

    Selected native plants from the same remnant records:

    These inventories include edges and disturbed patches. Shared remnant records do not establish that every plant grows together in one microsite.

    Show / hide ▾Native range & C-value

    State nativity describes a broad range. Use the Chicago-region assessment for local context; a state listing does not establish county nativity.

    Wetland indicator — NWPL 2022 Midwest FACW
    C-value — Chicago region, Flora 2017 3
    Chicago-region native — Flora 2017 Yes
    Native range — U.S. states Alabama; Arkansas; Colorado; Connecticut; Delaware; Georgia; Illinois; Indiana; Iowa; Kansas; Kentucky; Maine; Maryland; Massachusetts; Michigan; Minnesota; Mississippi; Missouri; Montana; Nebraska; New Hampshire; New Jersey; New Mexico; New York; North Carolina; North Dakota; Ohio; Oklahoma; Oregon; Pennsylvania; Rhode Island; South Carolina; South Dakota; Tennessee; Utah; Virginia; Washington; West Virginia; Wisconsin; Wyoming
    County nativity Not yet verified; occurrence records do not establish nativity.
    Show / hide ▾Pollinators & wildlife

    Bees & other flower visitors

    USGS observations recorded the following insects visiting flowers of this plant in Minnesota. The records describe visits, without distinguishing pollen collection from nectar feeding or measuring successful pollination. They do not establish local occurrence, exclusive dependence, or a larval-host relationship.

    Bees

    • Agapostemon virescens — Minnesota; 2016.
    • Apis mellifera (honey bee) — Minnesota; 2016.
    • Augochlorella aurata — Minnesota; 2016.

    Bees visiting flowers — southern Utah

    These bees were collected at this plant’s flowers in Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Utah, during the 2000–2003 survey. Flower collection records do not establish pollen specialization, successful pollination, or occurrence in an Illinois garden.

    • Calliopsis chlorops — 2003.
    • Perdita fallax — 2003.

    Caterpillars & other plant-feeding insects

    This plant has published caterpillar host records for the butterflies and moths listed below. These are larval feeding relationships, separate from adult nectar visits. The records span a North American literature compilation and do not establish that every insect occurs locally or uses only this plant.

    Moths

    • Cucullia alfarata — Camphorweed Cucullia, Halloween Paint, Camphorweed Cucullia
    • Landryia impositella
    • Schinia septentrionalis — Northern Flower Moth
    • Sonia canadana — Canadian Sonia Moth

    Other insect & wildlife relationships

    Caterpillars this plant can feed

    Pearl Crescent.

    • Adult nectar: Migrating monarchs, bees and hoverflies use the flowers for nectar.
    • Seed: Songbirds and small mammals eat the seeds.

    Additional published species records; Illinois insect occurrence is not established by this account. These records do not guarantee that every insect occurs at your planting site.

    Show / hide ▾Frequently asked questions

    What are the ideal growing conditions for New England Aster?
    Light: Full to partial sun. Soil moisture: Moist to average.

    Is New England Aster deer and herbivore resistant?
    Deer sometimes browse heavily enough to remove the plant. Even plants described as resistant may be browsed. Use physical protection where deer damage is a concern.

    When should I expect New England Aster to bloom?
    Typical flowering period: Late summer to fall. Timing varies with location and weather.

    Show / hide ▾Sources & ecological notes

    Landscape companion selection: Natural Communities compared the growing requirements shown on these species pages with selected source records: Mesic black-soil prairie — Loda Cemetery Prairie — Central Illinois. The shortlist is a planting-design inference. A shared record does not establish adjacency, identical soil requirements, local seed origin, or a tested planting combination. Regional synthesis records retain their documented focal-to-associate scope.

    Illinois communities & local records: INHS: Loda, Prospect and Weston prairie records.

    Native range & ecological ratings: Flora of the Chicago Region (2017), via Universal FQA; USACE Chicago FQA (2017); Kew WCVP / Plants of the World Online; USACE National Wetland Plant List.

    Growing conditions & other references: Illinois Wildflowers, John Hilty; Original publisher supplement; Patrick Goggin: Wisconsin native plant guide, p. 75; NC State Extension Plant Toolbox.

    Wildlife records: Carril et al.: Utah bee collections (2018); Shropshire & Tallamy: caterpillar hosts (2025); USGS Pollinator Library.

    Native range does not identify the origin of the seed or plants offered. Community and wildlife records apply to the locations and conditions described.

    Research notes & credits

    Carril, O.M., Griswold, T., Haefner, J. & Wilson, J.S. (2018). Wild bees of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument: richness, abundance, and spatio-temporal beta-diversity. Original publisher supplement. The 2018 publication is distributed under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication; this selection uses the publisher’s original supplement, not the later separately licensed GBIF/IPT distribution. Natural Communities selected exact catalog matches, retained source identifications and grouped flower collection records by bee and year. No pollen-load analysis or species-specific pollination effectiveness is inferred.

    USACE/ERDC fqadata — Chicago Region FQA 2017. Herman, B., Sliwinski, R. & Whitaker, S. (2017), Chicago Region FQA Calculator; distributed by USACE/ERDC in fqadata under CC0. Values may differ from Flora of the Chicago Region (2017). CC0 dedication. Retained for comparison; the displayed C-value follows Flora database 80.

    Range data: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; 4 June 2026 release, accessed 7 September 2026. © The Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. CC BY 3.0; selected and reformatted. Kew cannot warrant the quality or accuracy of these data. This use has no Kew endorsement.

    Caterpillar host records: Shropshire, K.J. & Tallamy, D.W. (2025), Lepidoptera of North America, Supplement 1. Contains information from this database made available under the Open Database License (ODbL 1.0). Natural Communities selected species-level records and screened source qualifications. The complete selection and transformation instructions for this page are available below under the same license.

    Flora rating attribution: Kenneth Johnson (2018), Flora of the Chicago Region UFQA Database, following Gerould Wilhelm and Laura Rericha (2017), Flora of the Chicago Region: A Floristic and Ecological Synthesis. Individual rating facts are presented with original commentary; the calculator’s software license is not treated as a license for the underlying Flora publication.

    Caterpillar research records

    Plant: Symphyotrichum novae-angliae

    Record scope: Host literature synthesis; no county nativity or local insect occurrence inferred.

    Shropshire & Tallamy (2025) · Original research dataset · Reuse license: ODbL-1.0

    Plant names in the source Source insect record IDs
    Aster novae-angliae; Symphyotrichum novae-angliae 207585, 211550
    Symphyotrichum novae-angliae 203649, 211272

    How these records were selected

    To reproduce this selection, use the “UDELep May 2025” worksheet in the original research dataset.

    1. Match the insect record IDs above to column A (UDLepID). Within each table row, pair every listed insect ID with every listed source plant name.
    2. Use the first two words in column H for the insect’s scientific name, column E for its common name, and column AB for its source category.
    3. Treat the selected pairs as reported caterpillar host records. Keep all other source fields unchanged and outside this selected table. Include no other rows or host pairs.
    4. Group butterflies and skippers together, and the other categories as moths. Retain the source’s exotic-category labels and sort display names by scientific insect name.

    Growing guidance: Illinois Extension — Keeping deer out of the yard and garden. Selected facts in original wording. General deer advice is not a species resistance rating.

    Plant Shipping & Care

    We want to ensure that our customers get what they want, a native backyard oasis. To do that, we need to follow a few simple guidelines and give you some information and pointers to make sure you get your plants delivered in a healthy state.

    As a reminder, you will receive an email to confirm your pickup or shipping window just before the plants are ready. See Order Fulfillment below for seasonal fulfillment windows.

     

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    • Seed Typically Ships Out Within One Week Of Order All Year Long
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    • If a plant order is placed while outside of the plant fulfillment window your plants will be reserved through your payment, however, the order will not be fulfilled and shipped until the following spring. We don't want to provide you plants when they won't be happy during the cold winter months. 
    • Early in the spring and later in the fall certain species may be dormant or partially dormant with brown leaves, however they will return to grow healthy next growing season.
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          What to Expect When Receiving Your Delivery

          • Your plants will be packaged with the utmost care
          • We will need to cut back certain plants prior to shipping. This seems counter-intuitive, however, the fewer leaves the less water the plants can lose during shipping, resulting in healthier plants for you. This also enables the plants to fit within the protective packaging and shipped safely.

           

             Shipments

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            What to Do With Your Plants After  Receiving Your Delivery

            • Unpack your order IMMEDIATELY
            • Inspect for damage and report any issues immediately to Natives@NaturalCommunities.net
            • Water your plants
            • Install your plants as quickly as possible and water the entire garden area thoroughly
            • If you cannot install your plants immediately
              • Some plants may not be in a container, put them into some kind of a container such as a paper cup with loose soil until installation
              • Make sure each plant is receiving the appropriate amount of light.
              • Continue to water daily each morning and possibly again in the afternoon
              • No additional fertilizer is needed
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