Born in September

• VirgoThe Maiden
• LibraThe Scales

A September birthday begins as Virgo. Between 1920 and 2026 the sun moved into Libra, at the September equinox, on the 22nd of September in 23 years (the first in 1968), the 23rd in 81 and the 24th in 3 (1923, 1927 and 1931), in universal time. A birthday on 22 September, 23 September or 24 September is therefore Virgo or Libra depending on the year, and in the year of a crossing on the hour; the page for each of those dates gives the sign and the moment of the crossing for every year.

Every other date in September had one sign all day in every one of those years: Virgo up to the 21st and Libra from the 25th.

In the astrological tradition Virgo is an earth sign and a mutable one, ruled by Mercury. Printed tables give it as 23 August – 22 September; between 1920 and 2026 the sun entered it on the 22nd, 23rd or 24th of August and left it on the 22nd, 23rd or 24th of September.

In the astrological tradition Libra is an air sign and a cardinal one, ruled by Venus. Printed tables give it as 23 September – 22 October; between 1920 and 2026 the sun entered it on the 22nd, 23rd or 24th of September and left it on the 22nd, 23rd or 24th of October.

Sapphire has been September's stone since 1912, unchanged. It is corundum, the same mineral as July's ruby, and it comes in almost every colour but red: the blue most people picture comes from traces of iron and titanium together, a few hundredths of a percent of each, and the pinkish orange padparadscha, named from the Sinhalese for the lotus flower, is among the rarest. Sri Lanka, Madagascar and Myanmar are among the main sources, and most sapphire on the market has been heated to improve its colour.

The 1912 list is the one the National Association of Jewelers adopted at Kansas City that August, as G. F. Kunz printed it in The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (1913), with a birth-stone for each month and an alternate for some; today's list is the one GIA publishes. The two lists compared →

The aster and the morning glory are September's flowers. Aster is Greek for a star, for the shape of the flower head, but almost nothing sold as a garden aster is still in the genus Aster: the North American species, the Michaelmas daisies among them, were moved to Symphyotrichum, the New England aster in 1995, and true Aster is now a genus of the Old World. The morning glory is named for flowers that open in the early morning and fade by the afternoon. Its seeds carry alkaloids related to LSD, which makes it a plant to keep away from pets.

The meanings usually given today are a summary of the birth-flower lists printed now. The older ones are quoted from the dictionary named, under the heading it prints them. Birth flowers and the language of flowers →