The growth charateristics and karyotypes of Aster spathulifolius collected from 5 sites including coastal and island region on the Korean peninsula, were analysed. Several morphological characteristics of the plants such as leaf length, leaf width, top internode, medium internode, spike branching, flower diameter, number of petal, leaf color, leaf form, stem and leaf hair, viscosity, and serration of the plants were distinctly different depending on the native region from which they were collected. Karyotypic analysis showed that the chromosome number was all diploid (2n=18), with one pair of submetacentric satellite chromosomes. The chromosome composition included 7 pairs of metacentric chromosomes and 2 pairs of submetacentric chromosomes in all plants. However, chromosome order and the ranges of the chromosome lengths were a little different from plant to plant according to their native growing regions. The plants from Geoje-Do especially showed large differences in the chromosome lengths between the longest and the shortest compared to the plants from other places. This results provide important data to support the classification of the species into several sub-species.

• Pyung-Sub Yoon
• Hye-Mi Park
• Dong-Min Kim
• Hyun-Hee Kim