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hairy false goldenaster

Heterotheca villosa ยท Asteraceae

hairy false goldenaster (Heterotheca villosa)
Photo: (c) eigenmotion, some rights reserved (CC BY) ยท CC BY ยท via iNaturalist

hairy false goldenaster (Heterotheca villosa) is a perennial herbaceous plant in the Asteraceae family. It is native to North America. USDA records it as hardy in zone 3 and warmer, down to about -33ยฐF.

At a glance

Typeforb-herb USDA
Lifecycleperennial USDA
Native statusnative USDA
Mature height3 ft USDA
Lightfull-sun USDA
Water needlow USDA
Growth ratemoderate USDA
Soil pH6โ€“7.5 USDA
BloomJuly USDA
Flower colorYellow USDA
Hardiness zones3 and warmer USDA
Guild layerground-cover Derived
Nursery availabilityField Collections Only USDA

USDA quoted from the USDA PLANTS database ยท Derived computed by a fixed rule from those columns. No value on this page is estimated.

Growing conditions

It needs full sun. USDA rates it as having low water needs once established. It is recorded on soils from pH 6 to 7.5 โ€” a broad range that spans acidic through mildly alkaline ground. Its cold limit is zone 3; USDA publishes no warm-end limit, so gardeners in warmer zones should check local heat tolerance separately.

Size and growth

At maturity it reaches about 3 ft, making it a low to knee-height plant. It grows at a moderate rate, which matters when you are timing a planting around the layers above it.

Bloom period

USDA records a bloom period of July. The flower color USDA records is yellow. Bloom timing is how the Guild Builder overlaps flowering across a planting so something is in flower for as much of the season as possible.

Bloom period is a claim about when this plant flowers. It is deliberately not a pollinator rating โ€” no dataset we trust publishes one, so we do not make that claim. See Data & sources.

Role in a guild

Ground cover. In a layered planting this is the lowest layer โ€” it shades soil, holds moisture, and suppresses weeds. We derive the layer from the plant's growth habit and mature height using a fixed rule, so the same inputs always produce the same layer.

Build a guild around hairy false goldenaster โ†’

Tags

deciduousdrought-tolerantsandy-soildeer-resistantnativefull-sunground-cover

Related plants

Similar role and hardiness

Where this data comes from

Every value on this page comes from the USDA PLANTS database record for symbol HEVI4, or is computed from those values by a fixed rule. Nothing here is estimated or model-generated. Where USDA publishes no value, this page omits the claim rather than filling the gap.

USDA also lists this plant under symbol HEVIV, recorded at a finer rank (variety or subspecies) under the same accepted name and common name. We show one entry rather than near-identical repeats; the figures above are those of HEVI4 alone, not an average across them.

Read our full data sources and methodology.

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