| Author | (L.) A. Love & D. Love | |
| Distribution | Mountains and Piedmont, but scarce in the eastern Piedmont, with records lacking for many counties there.
Lab. to B.C., south to GA, AL, MO, and NE. | |
| Abundance | Fairly common to locally common in the Mountains and the western and central Piedmont. Rare to locally uncommon in the eastern third of the Piedmont. | |
| Habitat | Wet to moist soils of marshes, openings in brownwater bottomlands and floodplain forests, river and stream shores, ditches, wet meadows, bogs. |
| Phenology | Flowering and fruiting September-October. | |
| Identification | Purplestem Aster is robust, up to 7 feet tall, usually several stems together that are red-purple in color. Stems are coarsely hairy (sometimes only hairy in narrow lines). Leaves are lance-shaped to elliptic, stalkless and clasping, sparsely toothed, rough above, 4-7 inches long, and only slightly reduced in size up the stem. Inflorescences are wide-branching, with large heads of lavender-blue to purplish rays and yellow disks. Elliott's Aster (S. elliottii) is similar but occurs only on the outer Coastal Plain; it has glabrous stems and non-clasping leaves, and its flowers are generally pink to pink-lavender and not blue-colored. | |
| 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.
The taxon in NC is the nominate variety. However, Weakley (2022) also lists a var. 1, an undescribed entity found in a bog(s) in the northern mountains, which is under study by Poindexter and Weakley. The website editors choose not to include it as a valid taxon just yet.
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| Other Common Name(s) | Swamp Aster, Red-stalk Aster, Red-stem Aster | |
| State Rank | S4 [S4S5] | |
| Global Rank | G5 | |
| State Status | | |
| US Status | | |
| USACE-agcp | OBL link |
| USACE-emp | OBL link |
