John C. Semple WAT

Ampelaster Nesom

The Climbing Aster

Ampelaster includes a single x=9 species native to the outer coastal plain of the SE United States. Ampelaster carolinianus is a vine-like shrub sprawling over other vegetation. Semple and Brouillet (1980) treated it as one of the virguloid asters before its chromosome number was known. The karyotype is very distinct for a symphyotrichoid aster and very unlike the virguloid karyotype. On the basis of head array features and floral and leaf morphology, A. carolinianus appears to be related to Symphyotrichum patens, S. adnatum and S. walteri, but this is a superficial resemblance only. Nesom (1994) emphasized its unique features by placing it in its own genus. It is the only woody perennial scandent aster in North America. Xiang and Semple (1996) found it to be next to basal within the Symphyotrichum Clade based on cpDNA RFLP analysis. This was confirmed in Brouillet et al. (2001a, b) using ITS sequence data. Semple et al. (2002) accepted Nesom's nomenclature for the species.