Plants with creeping rhizomes or sometimes a short rhizome or caudex, the stems 3-10 dm, glabrous or puberulent upward; lvs linear to lance-linear or linear-elliptic, sessile, entire or nearly so, ±scabrous above, glabrous beneath, all or nearly all cauline, the main ones 3-11 cm נ3-10 mm, those of the branches much reduced; infl open, usually ample, often diffuse, the branches with numerous spreading or ascending, oblong or spatulate bracts; heads ±numerous, conspicuously long-pedunculate, the peduncles bracteate like the branches of the infl, generally at lest some of them 2 cm or more (even to 15 cm); invol 4-6(-7) mm, glabrous, its bracts strongly imbricate, with short broad green tip, tending to be obtuse, often some of them dilated upward; rays 13-30, pale lavender or bluish to sometimes white, 5-9 mm; lobes of the disk-cors comprising 20-35% of the limb; 2n=16, 32. Dry or moist, often sandy places; s. Me. to Fla., w. to Mich., Ark., and La., most commonly on or near the coastal plain. (A. coridifolius)

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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