Content tagged with "Trees, Shrubs and Woody Vines"

Though it doesn’t reach a “stately” size, honey locust commands respect because of its many large, strong, usually branched thorns, which can puncture tractor tires as easily as they can poke through tennis shoes! The long, leathery, twisting pods are relished by cattle and by wildlife.

Native to the northeastern United States and Canada, jack pine has been introduced in many other places, including Missouri. This scrubby tree is planted as an ornamental, for windbreaks or for erosion control. It reproduces locally in and around places where it has been planted.

There’s no mistaking this tree when its large, tough seedpods are hanging from its limbs or dropping to the ground below. Unpopular as food with today’s wildlife, these seedpods might have been a food source for mastodons and other large, extinct North American mammals.

This native Missouri honeysuckle is uncommon and widely scattered in the state, but it does well as a trellis vine in the native landscape garden. Identify it by its crowded clusters of tubular, yellow or greenish-yellow flowers, tinged with red, purple or pink, that are noticeably enlarged on one side at the base.