Tall Flat-topped White Aster (Doellingeria umbellata (Mill.) Nees)
Also known as flat-topped aster, parasol whitetop, tall white-aster.
↑Range - Expand
| Legend | Color |
| Native | |
| Native or Not Present |
This tentative map is based on our own research. It may have limited data on Canada and/or Mexico, and there is some subjectivity in our assignment of plants as introduced vs. expanded. Read more in this blog post.
Although this plant occurs somewhere in each of these regions, it may only occur in a small part of some or all of them.
↑Habitat
Doellingeria umbellata occurs in a variety of wet to moist, sunny to partly-sunny habitats. Natural habitats include wet meadows, openings in floodplain forests, openings and edges in other bottomland woods, bogs, fens, marshes, and seeps, margins and bars of high-gradient streams, moist sand prairies, interdune sloughs along the Great Lakes, and wet spots in high-elevation meadows and balds in the Southern Appalachians. It is less frequent in anthropogenic habitats, but can occur in wet spots in pastures and anthropogenic woodland edges in bottomlands, where it sometimes establishes as escapes from plantings.
In the north of its range, it commonly occurs on calcareous sands with only slightly acidic pH, but in the southeast of its range it is more indifferent to soil chemistry and is found on soils of a wider range of pH. It prefers sites with sandy soils to sandy-loam to silt-loam, and is not usually found on clay soils. Its preferred soils are usually well-drained in texture, but it usually occurs on sites that are either poorly-drained due to topography or frequently wet due to a water source.
It requires considerable direct sun overhead, but often occurs on sites with heavy competition from other herbaceous plants.
↑Uses
This plant is occasionally used in gardens and slightly more frequently in meadow seed mixes and restoration plantings. It is valued for its showy flowers, but its use in gardens is limited by its tall height and tendency to flop over when unsupported.
↑Links & External Resources
• Doellingeria umbellata (Flat-topped Aster) | Illinois Wildflowers (About This Site)
• Doellingeria umbellata (parasol whitetop) | USDA PLANTS Database (About This Site)
• Doellingeria umbellata | Go Botany (About This Site)
• Doellingeria umbellata | Biota of North America Project (BONAP) (About This Site)
• Doellingeria umbellata | NatureServe Explorer (About This Site)
• Doellingeria umbellata | Flora of North America (About This Site)
• Flat-topped White Aster | Maryland Biodiversity Project (About This Site)
• Doellingeria umbellata (Flat-topped White Aster) | Minnesota Wildflowers (About This Site)
• Doellingeria umbellata (P. Mill.) Nees (Tall Flat-topped White Aster) | Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora (About This Site)
↑Photo gallery
