'Alert' Aster is a member of the famous dwarf aster group. Growing a dwarf aster is one of the very best ways you can assure some fall blooms for your meadow or garden. They are simple to handle and hardy as oaks. 'Alert' Aster stays short, and will fill it's space with a neat, low green tuft that bursts into bloom in late summer with deep purple to crimson, starry flowers. After about two years, you can dig up two or three plants, and divide them into twenty...and then replant yourself a huge patch, or have yards of edging.

The dwarf Aster dumosis (now Symphyotrichum dumosum) hybrids resulted from a cross between wild Aster nova novi-belgii, the much taller New York Aster, with another wild aster from the Pacific northwest.