: 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
Some excellent examples include fall-blooming asters, chrysanthemums, and butterfly bushes.—Paul Cappiello, The Courier-Journal, 21 June 2024 Popular native aster family perennials include aster (Symphyotrichum, Eurybia, and a few other genera), blazing-star (Liatris), sunflowers (Helianthus), Joe-Pye weed and kin (Eupatorium, Eutrochium, Conoclinium), sneezeweed (Helenium), and goldenrods (Solidago, Euthamia).—Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 20 June 2024 Fifty varieties of plants are available for purchase, including four milkweed varieties, several grasses, native purple coneflower, cardinal flower, great blue lobelia, meadow blazing star, New England aster, prairie smoke, wild columbine and wild lupine.—Elaine Rewolinski, Journal Sentinel, 19 Apr. 2024 Samphire and leafier greens such as sea aster are harvested from the test field and served in restaurants across Terschelling.—Cameron Pugh, The Christian Science Monitor, 25 Mar. 2024 See all Example Sentences for aster
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'aster.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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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