Happy Michaelmas down under

Kayaking down the Yarra River in recent weeks I've been noticing the variety of weeds. Not with distaste, more botanical curiosity. Most of them clearly spread through seed or plant material washing down the river but they are often in distinct zones. Outcompeting local plants and each other in their particular patch.

In mid-April, two are in full bloom - the Madeira Vine (Andredra cordifolia) which I posted on five years ago (from China) and this one, the Michaelmas Daisy. Or more locally, the Easter Daisy.

Aster 'Little Carlow' is the name Jane Edmanson from Gardening Australia gave to things planted under the name 'Easter Daisy' in a segment around the same time I posted on Madeira Vine. She says it was a popular garden plant late last century which went out of fashion but is now making a comeback - due to its hardiness. Not in my neighbourhood it seems, where I searched in vain to find a bush to photograph for this post.

Instead, all my images are from this sprig of Easter/Michaelmas Daisy I took from the river side on Good Friday. I refrained from taking pictures while afloat, concentrating more on staying upright (and not dropping a camera or phone in the mighty Birrarung). 

According to Missouri Botanical Garden, 'Little Carlow' is a hybrid between Aster cordifolius and Aster novi-belgii. The latter is what our HortFlora calls the Michaelmas Daisy, from North America, now in the genus Symphyotrichum. As is Aster cordifolius, also from North America.

Symphyotrichum is a genus of about 90 species, mostly from the Americas but with one species from eastern Asia (Aster is very much a European and Asian genus now). It's hard to diagnose so I won't.

VicFlora eschews the cultivar name, and also identifies the mildly weedy Michaelmas Daisy as Symphyotrichum novi-belgii. The other 'naturalised' species in Victoria is Symphyotrichum subulatum, with the mauve 'florets' only extended a little beyond the green 'involucral bracts' beneath, rather than at least twice as long as in our species.

Now Michaelmas, as I'm sure you all know, is a Northern Hemisphere festival held on the 29th September, which seems as close as they were willing to get to the autumn equinox. For us on the other side of the Earth, our Aster 'Little Carlow' (or Aster novi-belgii) flowers in April, earning the moniker Easter Daisy. Easter, as I'm sure you also know, is the first day after the first full moon after the (in our case autumn) equinox. Or something like that.

There are undoubtedly other cultivars nestling within the title of Easter Daisy (in Australia) and Michaelmas Daisy (further north). How invasive they are, and whether the cultivars set viable seed, I don't know.

In any case, one of them, or a parent species, added a pleasing mauve tinge to my early morning paddle (not evident here, in this picture taken a few years ago, when I was braver with my camera carrying).