: any of various chiefly fall-blooming leafy-stemmed composite herbs (Aster and closely related genera) with often showy heads containing disk flowers or both disk and ray flowers
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Noun
Perennials to plant: allium, Asiatic lily, aster, astilbe, black-eyed susan, clematis, columbine, coneflower, chrysanthemum, daffodils, daisies, daylily, forget-me-not, geranium, goldenrod, Hellebore, hollyhock, hydrangea, lavender, peonies and roses.—Clarence Schmidt, San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Apr. 2025 As members of the aster family, tansy blooms consist of hundreds of tiny flowers packed tightly together that support parasitoid wasps, small native bees, honeybees, lacewings, and syrphid flies.—Kim Toscano, Southern Living, 15 Apr. 2025 Refresh your container garden with asters in shades of blue, white, and purple when the other flowers begin to fade.—Brandee Gruener, Southern Living, 15 Apr. 2025 Here, visitors can experience arguably one of the most unique and colorful wildflower displays in the country, which features an array of desert plants, including prickly pear, evening primroses, Mojave asters, and desert paintbrushes.—Deb Hopewell, AFAR Media, 24 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for aster
Word History
Etymology
Noun
(sense 1) borrowed from New Latin, genus name, going back to Latin aster-, astēr "a plant, probably Aster amellus," borrowed from Greek aster-, astḗr "star, the plant Aster amellus"; (sense 2) borrowed from Greek aster-, astḗr "star" — more at star entry 1
Noun suffix
Middle English, from Latin, suffix denoting partial resemblance
: a system of microtubules arranged in rays around a centriole at either end of the mitotic or meiotic spindle
The first stage in the formation of the mitotic spindle in a typical animal cell is the appearance of microtubules in a "sunburst" arrangement, or aster, around each centrosome during early prophase.—Gerald Karp, Cell and Molecular Biology: Concepts and Experiments, 6th edition
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