Field Guide

Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants

Showing 181 - 190 of 224 results
Photo of yarrow or common milfoil flower cluster
Yarrow (Common Milfoil)
Achillea millefolium
Native to North America, Europe, and Asia, yarrow has been used for medicine and magic for millennia. This aromatic plant has fine, hairy, fernlike leaves and flat-topped clusters of little white flowers.
Photo of Culver's root plant with flowers
Culver’s Root
Veronicastrum virginicum
Culver’s root is a tall, graceful perennial with flower clusters that look like candelabras. The white flowers are packed together in slender, brushlike spikes. The leaves are in whorls, well-spaced along the stalk.
Photo of Missouri evening primrose flower with river in distance
Missouri Evening Primrose
Oenothera macrocarpa (formerly O. missouriensis)
The yellow flowers of Missouri evening primrose crown limestone bluffs in the Ozarks and sprawl along the tops of rocky road cuts, sweetening highway trips in the southern part of the state. It is an excellent and hardy native garden plant, too!
Photo of a false loosestrife flower closeup
False Loosestrife
Ludwigia alternifolia
One of eleven water primrose species in Missouri, false loosestrife is distinguished by its cubical fruits that open at a pore in the tip. Look for it in wet places like the edges of ponds, ditches, and along rivers and streams.
Photo of hogwort plant showing upper stem leaves and flowers.
Hogwort (Woolly Croton)
Croton capitatus
Hogwort is fuzzy, densely covered with whitish hairs. A common but often overlooked plant in pastures, prairies, ditches, and roadsides, it’s usually less than 18 inches tall.
Photo of eastern woodland sedge plant growing among leaf litter.
Sedges
Carex, Schoenoplectus, Scirpus, and other genera
Missouri has more than 200 species in the sedge family. Distinguishing between these grasslike plants can be difficult, but it’s easy to learn some basics about the group.
Photo of many blooming ashy sunflower plants, showing gray-green leaves.
Sunflowers
Helianthus spp.
Most people recognize sunflowers when they see them, with their bright yellow ray flowers and rather flattened center of dark disk flowers. There are 16 species of Helianthus in Missouri.
Closeup of single flowerhead of a New World aster with yellow disk florets and lavender ray florets
New World Asters (American Asters)
Symphyotrichum spp. (formerly Aster spp.)
Missouri has 24 species of New World asters in genus Symphyotrichum. Most have purple or white ray flowers and yellow disk flowers that turn reddish over time. Most bloom in late summer and fall.
Lamb's quarters plant growing in bare, disturbed soil
Lamb's quarters (Pigweed)
Chenopodium album
Lamb’s quarters won’t win any beauty contests for its flowers, but it merits an award for being both a common garden weed as well as a nutritious leafy green valued around the world.
Rope dodder stems
Dodders
Cuscuta spp.
Dodders are easy to identify, even though at first you might not recognize them as plants. These parasitic plants usually look like a hairlike mass of yellow or orange, leafless, wiry, vining stems wrapping around the stems of other plants.
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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!