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Asteraceae family

Sea Aster Tripolium pannonicum

Sea Aster is an introduced perennial herb, found in the lower 48 states. It grows to 1.6 ft.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 7 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
1.6 ft
Lifespan
Perennial
In the garden
Herb layer — Sits in the herb of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
✦ Bees 16 bee visitors
Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →
Wildlife & visitors 1 bird · 12 nectaring

Open records of who else uses Sea Aster — a generalist food-web signal, kept separate from the keystone Ecological Value.

Recorded eaten by 1 bird species (fruit, seed, browse):

Branta bernicla · Brant

12 adult butterfly & moth species are recorded nectaring at its flowers — the most-recorded:

Cucullia asteris · Star-Wort Cynthia cardui Vanessa atalanta · Red Admiral Pyronia tithonus · Hedge Brown Polygonia c-album · Comma Pieris rapae · Small White
Interaction records (observations, not exhaustive) from GloBI → (CC0). Counts are distinct species; names are the most-recorded. Common names from Wikidata (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (16) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[07] Ecological value — GloBI
[09] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[11] Wildlife & visitors — GloBI — Global Biotic Interactions (CC0)
[15] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI
[16] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
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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