Content tagged with "Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants"

Puccoons and many other members of the borage family have a fascinating type of flower stalk. Technically termed a "scorpiod cyme," the small, tubular flowers arise on spirally condensed, terminal stalks that uncoil and elongate as more flowers open toward the tip.

This plant looks something like a goldenrod, except that the tiny composite flowers are not yellow. Instead, they are cream-colored and rather drab. In Missouri, this plant is especially associated with disturbed habitats and is a troublesome crop weed.

Who can visit a prairie and keep their eyes from the bright red of Indian paintbrush? And who, pondering Indian paintbrush, can not contemplate the Osage, the Kansa, the Pawnee and many other people who lived in these prairies before the pioneers?

Is that a wildflower, or a mushroom? Unlike most plants, Indian pipe lacks chlorophyll, so it is white, not green. Below ground, its roots join with fungi that connect to tree roots. This plant, then, takes nourishment indirectly from the trees.