Image of alpine aster

Description:

Slo.: gorska nebina - Habitat: steep grassland, southeast oriented slope, skeletal, calcareous ground; open place, full sun, exposed to direct rain; average precipitations ~ 3.000 mm/year, average temperature about 0 deg C, elevation 2.075 m (6.800 feet), alpine phytogeographical region. - Substratum: soil. - Comment: This mountain beauty is one of the nicest. The plant's heads have sometimes up to 6 cm in diameter. Aster alpinus is very widely distributed and grows in all parts of the Alps and in almost all other European mountains. Only in Pyrenees and Dinaric Mountains of Balkan Peninsula one will search for it in vain. Since it is an Arctic-Alpine botanical element it is known also from far north in North America, Siberia, Ural and also from Altai Mountains. - It is interesting that it successfully thrives from low valleys to up to above 2.000 m elevation. In Trenta valley one can find them at about 500 m elevation, surprisingly, as beautiful (only a little bit taller), as on Mangart's flats above 2.000 m. Usually flowers, which are at home high in the mountains, look quite differently when growing at very low elevations. They are either much taller or smaller and almost obviously don't flower so abundantly, or their colors don't develop fully. Not so with Aster alpinum. Yellow tubular disk flowers of the heads are bisexual while external violet ray flowers are female only. - Ref.: (1) M.A. Fischer, W. Adler, K. Oswald, Exkursionsflora fr sterreich, Liechtenstein und Sdtirol, LO Landesmuseen, Linz, Austria (2005). (2) A. Martini et all., Mala Flora Slovenije (Flora of Slovenia - Key), Tehnina Zaloba Slovenije (2007) (in Slovenian), p 645. (3) T. Wraber, 2 x Sto alpskih rastlin na Slovenskem (2 times 100 Alpine Plants of Slovenia), Preernova druba (2006) (in Slovenian), p 172. (4) D. Aeschimann, K. Lauber, D.M. Moser, J.P. Theurillat, Flora Alpina, Vol. 2., Haupt (2004), p 432. (5) K.Lauber and G.Wagner, Flora Helvetica, 5. Auflage, Haupt (2012), p 1052.