Southern Rough-leaf or Wrinkle-leaf Goldenrod
Solidago rugosa var. aspera (Ait.) Fern. is widely distributed across the southeastern U.S. becoming infrequent northward. It grows in sandy, silty, and clay soils, fields, thickets, edges of woods, roadsides, and ditches. Leaves are relatively thick and firm, strongly rugose-nerved, usually blunt-toothed to subentire, apices often acute, relatively short and stiff hairy; upper stem leaves are lanceolate to elliptic, not much reduced upward; ray florets 4–9 (Semple & Cook 2006 FNA). Both diploids and tetraploids (2n=18, 2n=36) occur in var. aspera (Semple et al. 2021).
1-2. Solidago rugosa var. aspera. 1. Shoots, Semple & Suripto 9846, Cherokee Co., North Carolina. 2. Stem and leaves, Semple & Ringius 7641, Sussex Co., Delaware.
Semple, J.C., Jie Zhang, R.E. Cook, and B.A. Suripto. 2021. Cytogeography of the Solidago rugosa Mill. complex (Asteraceae: Astereae) in Eastern North America. Taxonomy 2021 (1): 290-301.
Last revised 13 April 2025 by J.C. Semple
© 2025 J.C. Semple, including all photographs unless otherwise indicated