Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants
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Scientific Name
Lactuca floridana
Description
A true lettuce that can be eaten as a cooked or salad green, Florida lettuce has lavender to purplish blue flowers and grows statewide.
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Scientific Name
Lobelia siphilitica
Description
Blue cardinal flower, or blue lobelia, is a showy, late-blooming native wildflower that grows along streams, ditches, sloughs, and other wet places. It has blue or purple tubular flowers with 2 upper lips and 3 lower lips.
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Scientific Name
Triodanis perfoliata (formerly Specularia perfoliata)
Description
Clasping Venus' looking glass is a single-stemmed plant with purple or blue star-shaped flowers and bluntly toothed, alternate leaves that clasp the stem. It's scattered statewide in a variety of habitats and blooms May-June.
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Scientific Name
Amsonia illustris
Description
Often found on gravelly Ozark streamsides, shining blue star lifts its clusters of showy, light-blue flowers in late spring. A top choice for native wildflower gardening, it is interesting spring, summer, and fall.
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Scientific Name
Asclepias syriaca
Description
Common milkweed is famous as a food plant for monarch butterflies. It bears curious seedpods bearing seeds that fly on silky parachutes. It's common statewide in a variety of habitats.
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Scientific Name
Subfamily Asclepiadoideae
Description
Milkweeds are a group of plants that used to have their very own family. Now part of the dogbane family, they’re still a pretty distinctive group.
See Also
About Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants in Missouri
A very simple way of thinking about the green world is to divide the vascular plants into two groups: woody and nonwoody (or herbaceous). But this is an artificial division; many plant families include some species that are woody and some that are not. The diversity of nonwoody vascular plants is staggering! Think of all the ferns, grasses, sedges, lilies, peas, sunflowers, nightshades, milkweeds, mustards, mints, and mallows — weeds and wildflowers — and many more!