Florida Goldenaster Chrysopsis floridana
Florida Goldenaster is a perennial wildflower native to the lower 48 states. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.
More about this plant
Chrysopsis floridana is a rare species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae, known by its common name, Florida golden aster. It is endemic to Florida in the United States, where it is known from Hillsborough, Hardee, Manatee, and Pinellas Counties. It is considered an endemic of the west-central coast of the state in the general vicinity of Tampa Bay. There are 17 to 20 occurrences, many of which have few individuals, but one of which has over one million plants. In 1986 the plant was added to the US endangered species list because it was becoming increasingly rare, it was growing only on private property, and its habitat was unprotected and being destroyed and degraded by a number of forces. It is found at Bell Creek Nature Preserve in Riverview, Florida. Wikipedia →
Growing & care
USDA PLANTS · TRY- Hardiness
- ≥ zone 11 derived from its U.S. range
- Lifespan
- Perennial
Wildlife & pollinators
How pollinator value is scored →❧ Caterpillar hosts ~1 caterpillar species
Chrysopsis supports ~1 caterpillar species.
Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.
Recorded feeding on Chrysopsis in North America, including:
✦ Bees specialist-bee host · 7 bee visitors
Specialist native bees depend on it.
Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Chrysopsis is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.
7 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Florida Goldenaster :
+ 1 more bees → ↑ show fewer
Related plants
More Chrysopsis →
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.
Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.
Sources for this entry (17) Open & cited
Cite this page Open data, please attribute
PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
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