Panicled aster has a stout rhizome and can spread to form a clonal colony as well as reproduce by wind-blown seed.

Because of its rhizomatic spreading and its production of chemicals that can be detrimental to other plants around it, the species can do damage to ecosystems outside of its native range, as it has in Europe where it has been introduced.

Symphyotrichum lanceolatum is currently divided into subspecies and varieties which have minor differences in appearance and vary in chromosome counts as well as distribution, with some overlap.

It is a conservationally secure species whose late-summer and fall appearing flowers play an important role for late-season pollinators and nectar-seeking insects such as bumblebees, wasps, and hoverflies.

In addition to being used by indigenous peoples of the Americas for medicinal purposes, it has been cultivated as an ornamental garden plant and used in the cut flower industry.

Panicled aster grows from a rhizome and has a thick, erect stem that can reach 1.5 meters (5 feet) tall or more, sometimes approaching 2 m (6+1⁄2 ft).

[22] Aster comes from the Ancient Greek word ἀστήρ (astḗr), meaning "star," referring to the shape of the flower.

The word "aster" was used to describe a star-like flower as early as 1542 in German physician and botanist Leonhart Fuchs' book De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, Latin for Notable Commentaries on the History of Plants.

An early use of this name can be found in the same work by Fuchs as Sternkraut, translated from German literally as "star herb" (Stern Kraut).

[3][4] In its native range, it occurs in a wide variety of mostly moist and open habitats, including riparian areas, meadows, and ditches.

It grows at 10–2,700 m (30–8,860 ft) on the edges of streams in prairies, wet meadows, open slopes of mountainous pine forests, roadside ditches, and can live in calcareous soil.

hirsuticaule is native to the northwestern Great Lakes region as well as southeast Manitoba in "mucky soils on glacial deposits," and it can be found at 100–300 m (330–980 ft).

interior is native to streams in lowlands at 10–400 m (30–1,310 ft) in most of the Great Lakes region of North America as well as the central United States.

latifolium is a very widespread central and eastern species where grows in thickets, deciduous woods borders, stream banks, and ditches at 0–800 m (0–2,620 ft).

[14] Symphyotrichum lanceolatum has been introduced and naturalized in many parts of Europe, from Belgium to Serbia to Latvia, where it occurs in disturbed man-made habitats and riparian areas as an invasive species.

[30] In addition to dispersal by wind-blown seed, it spreads extensively by rhizomes to create large clonal colonies.

[28] The species is visited by a wide variety of late-season pollinating and nectar-seeking insects, including bees, hoverflies, flies, moths, and wasps.

[34] Leaf-mining insects known to feed on this species include Sumitrosis inaequalis, Ophiomyia curvipalpis, Phytomyza albiceps, and Microrhopala xerene.

[34] NatureServe lists the species Symphyotrichum lanceolatum as a whole as Secure (G5) worldwide; Vulnerable (S3) in Iowa; and, Imperiled (S2) in North Carolina and Newfoundland.

[40] Cultivar 'Edwin Beckett', developed before 1902, has pale violet-blue ray florets that make a flower head which is about 25 millimeters (1 inch) wide.