| Author | (Lindley) G.L. Nesom | |
| Distribution | Mountains only. Discovered in NC in the past several decades; not known in NC when RAB (1968) was published. There are specimens from Burke and Cherokee counties, plus a report from Transylvania County. Most records have come from Cherokee County, by Ed Schwartzman, who located about 6 sites there, most or nearly all with sizable populations. The Burke County specimen (at BOON) is without label data and without image; it needs vetting.
PA to southern Ont. and MN, south to central GA, MS, and AR; disjunct to northwestern FL. In VA, known only from the extreme northern Piedmont; not in the Mountains there. | |
| Abundance | Rare but locally common in parts of Cherokee County; extremely rare elsewhere in the Mountains north to Burke County. Perhaps overlooked. The NCNHP has now (2024) given a State Rank of S1S2, instead of the former S2. It is listed as Significantly Rare. | |
| Habitat | Dry rocky slopes and open slope woodlands, probably limited to rather high pH soils, though soil affinities seem not to have been mentioned. | |
| Phenology | Flowering and fruiting late August-October. | |
| Identification | Short's Aster grows mostly 2-4 feet tall, with stem leaves that are slender-stalked and lance-shape, essentially entire, tapered to the tip, and with a slightly cordate or notched base of the blade. To many, the shape of the blade recalls leaves of Walking Fern (Asplenium rhizophyllum). S. undulatum has definitely widely-clasping leafstalks (vs. not). S. urophyllum has strongly toothed leaf margins (vs. not or weakly so); that species has a mostly glabrous upper stem, whereas S. shortii has a strongly pilose upper stem, and that species has mostly white rays as opposed to mostly light blue in S. shortii. | |
| Taxonomic Comments | NOTE: The genus Aster was examined by G.L. Nesom (1994), who determined that it was composed of a number of discrete genera (a few of which were already split off by authors as Sericocarpus, Ionactis, etc.). The earliest available name for North American "Aster" is Symphyotrichum, a name regrettably long and hard to spell.
A synonym is Aster camptosorus.
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| Other Common Name(s) | None | |
| State Rank | S1S2 | |
| Global Rank | G5 | |
| State Status | SR-P | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | | |
| USACE-emp | | |
