The flowers of fall are few, but throughout British Columbia purple heads of asters can be found waving in the breeze from mountain top to the driest valley bottom. British Columbia is home to more than 20 species of these showy and tough wild flowers with purple to white blooms. Leafy aster, in its various guises, grows almost everywhere in the province and can be both weed or welcome part of a wildflower meadow. Slightly woody stems rise from a tenacious mat of reddish root crowns and rhizomes. Basal leaves are relatively large and broadly lance shaped, but at flowering time they have usually withered away.
Narrow leaves straggle along the rounded purplish stem, which branches from the midpoint up.
The small leafy branches bear several flowers. The showy part of the bloom is surrounded by a fringe of greenish bracts. Botanists call this structure an 'involucre'. Two kinds of florets pack the flower head, disc floret and ray florets. Disc florets are yellowish tubes in which the petals have nearly disappeared and mainly stamens and a pistil remain.