Free capacity.
Please RESERVE your seats in advance.
It's me, the salt aster. My flowers are currently covering the edges of the soda lilies like a purple ribbon. But this spectacle is soon over and the flowers turn into white seed balls. As my name suggests, unlike most plants, I like to stand on salty soil. If there is too much salt, I store it in the fleshy leaves and then drop them. Clever, isn't it? For more exciting facts, please read on... Or join us on one of the fall safaris at Seewinkel!
Your salt aster
(Tripolium pannonicum)
Image credit: Rob Hille, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Header image credit: Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Family: Asteracae (Compositae)
Scientific name: Tripolium pannonicum
Growth height: 15 to 150 centimeters
Flowering time: September-October
Flower shape: Typical composite flower (such as the daisy) with a small head (tubular flowers) and surrounding ray petals
Flower color: tubular flowers yellow with surrounding purple ray petals
Leaves: fleshy lanceolate leaves
Image credit: Le.Loup.Gris, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Depending on the location, the salt aster can grow creeping close to the ground or waist-high if plenty of nutrients are available. The stem is branched and the leaves are quite inconspicuously lanceolate but noticeably fleshy. The many flowers are purple with a yellow button in the center. However, the spectacular flower fades relatively quickly and the salt marshes turn white due to the seeds of the salt aster.
The salt aster can be found in the salt soils around the soda pans. Here it does not colonize the direct edge of the puddle, but somewhat higher areas that can still be moist.
Image credit: Rob Hille, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Due to its special habitat requirements, the salt aster only colonizes a very small area in Austria, which is essentially limited to the salt soils in the Seewinkel . A few smaller occurrences exist in the Vienna Basin.
In Austria, the salt aster is on the Red List in the "endangered" category. One of the reasons for this is the disappearance of the soda varnishes in Seewinkel: since the middle of the 19th century, the number of varnishes has decreased by 80%, so that currently only 40 varnishes have been counted. But even these last special features of the area are threatened by high temperatures and the falling groundwater level.
Do not try to water your houseplants with salt water! Too much salt in the soil means that most plants are deprived of water, as the salt content in the soil is then higher than in the cells (osmotic stress). If salts are absorbed into the cells, this leads to a change in the ion balance and an associated reduction in enzyme activity and thus lower growth (ionic stress). But a few special plants have learned to deal with this stress. In ecology, these are called halophytes (from the ancient Greek for salt (hals) and plant (phytón)). Within the halophytes, a distinction is made between two groups: plants that need a high salt content to live (obligate halophytes) and those that can live with a high salt content (facultative halophytes). The salt aster belongs to the latter group. This pretty plant is also popular in home gardens, as it can live well next to sidewalks that are salted in winter.
As a late-flowering species, the salt aster is difficult to find in spring and summer. In September, the flowering phase begins, transforming the meadows around the salt pans into a sea of purple. However, this spectacle is short-lived and then the purple flowers turn into white seed balls that are carried away by the wind.
Videos with special content on the salt taster
The salt aster was found for the first time in 2021 on the grounds of St. Martins thermal baths & Lodge. The plant was growing by the renaturalized Lacke near the photo hide.
The top searches of the last 30 days