Basal leaves sparsely to obviously serrate. Arrays sometimes with much elongate proximal arching branches. 2n = 18, 36.

Flowering Aug-Oct. Swamps, boggy depressions, and other moist places, blackish sandy muck, sometimes dry sandy soils, mostly inner coastal plain; 20-300 m; Ala., Fla., Ga., N.C., S.C., Va.

Subspecies gracillima occurs away from the coast to the edge of the piedmont and usually has arching proximal array branches, several of which can be greatly elongated. Some plants from Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas treated as Solidago austrina are included here, but may deserve recognition as a variety. Solidago perlonga appears to belong in this subspecies: its arrays would be very aberrant if included in the typical subspecies.

Similar to no. 12 [Solidago uliginosa Nutt.]; glabrous throughout; middle and upper lvs mostly more numerous and more conspicuously reduced; infl elongate and narrow, varying from straight and nonsecund to more often secund or with short, secund branches and recurved tip, or with several long, slender, ascending, evidently secund branches; invol (3.5-)4-7 mm; achenes rather thinly strigose; 2n=18. Swamps and other moist places; Va. and W.Va. to Ga., Ala., and n. Fla. (S. austrina; S. perlonga)

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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