Missouri Department of Conservation

Includes three subspecies, Ozark (broken rays), Northern (Britt’s) and Arkansas (Reeve’s).

The butterfly is one of the most beautiful of Missouri’s mussels.

A common mussel in some areas, deertoe have decorative green markings.

These small mussels use darters, a type of fish, as hosts for their young.

The fatmucket was a favorite species harvested for the button industry in the early 1900s.

A widespread mussel that relies on freshwater drum as host fish for the developing young.

When a floater dies, this large mussel with a thick shell will actually rise to the water surface and float as it decays.

These diminutive mollusks are the smallest of Missouri’s freshwater mussels.

The mapleleaf spawns in the summer, using catfish as a host.

Finding the monkey’s face in this mussel's shell is left up to the imagination.

One of the most widespread and numerous mussels in southern Missouri.

Unlike most other freshwater mussels, this species is hermaphrodic: An individual mussel can be both male and female.

While the pimpleback is usually bumpy, some individuals are perfectly smooth.

A large dorsal wing and purple lining make identification of this widespread mussel easy.

This species enjoys the same geographic distribution in our state as the pink heelsplitter, and it generally resembles that species, too. But as the name suggests, the pink papershell usually has a thinner shell and is smaller. Also, it prefers rather shallow water with a good current.

Shaped like a checkered gunstock, with its unique, turned-down edge, pistolgrips are easy to identify.

One of the most common and widespread mussels in our state, its oval shape, relatively large size and frequent occurrence make it one of the most easily recognized.

This widespread species is one of the few Missouri mussels successful in shallow ponds and lakes.

Before buttons were made of plastic, they were made of shell. Because only white buttons were in demand, the coppery-purple shell of this species made it worthless for the button industry.

Round pigtoes are more rounded than Wabash pigtoes. Usually, the nacre (the shell lining) is white, but in rare individuals it is bright pink.

Missouri may have the largest number of spectaclecase mussels left in the world. These elongated shellfish can live for 60 years or more.

Nacre color varies from purple to pink to white. In smaller rivers, the shell is much thinner.

Among all the mussels of Missouri, this is perhaps the easiest to recognize: As the shell grows, large knobs are produced, first on one shell and then on the other, in an alternating pattern.

Sometimes called the blue-point, this mussel species is widely distributed in Missouri rivers and is occasionally found along reservoir margins.

A widespread mussel that releases its larvae in tiny red packages to attract fish hosts.

This favored habitat of this vulnerable species is large streams or rivers in firm sand and mud. The bumps on the shell may help to anchor it in the river bottom.

The shell of this mollusk is large and impressive in overall size. Although fairly flat, it can be more than 8 inches long. A large wing on the heelsplitter can be painful if you step on it.