Content tagged with "Trees, Shrubs and Woody Vines"

A member of the maple family, box elder is often confused with poison ivy because its compound leaves sometimes grow in threes (though also in fives). A fast-growing tree, its winged seeds betray its relationship to other maples.

If you’ve got a giant green thicket in your woods, you may have a bush honeysuckle infestation. These invasive plants are shrubby natives of Asia. Here in America, where they have no natural controls, they leaf out early, grow fast, spread fast and form dense thickets that crowd out Missouri’s native forest plants.

Sometimes a specific variety of a tree becomes so popular that the whole species becomes known by that name. This is the case with the widely planted 'Bradford' callery pear. Although callery pear has been hugely popular in landscaping, it can escape and hybridize with relatives. Alarmingly, it has become an invasive plant. Learn more about this problem, so you can choose your landscaping trees wisely!

The bark of this tree, as the name suggests, looks like the bark of a cherry tree. The species name starts to make sense when you hold one of the leaves with the leaf stalk upward: The pointed lobes make the leaf resemble an outline of a Chinese pagoda. Look for it in Missouri's Bootheel counties.