Field Guide

A very small shrub of our native prairies and other open sites, New Jersey tea was used by patriotic American colonists as a substitute for black tea imported from England during the Revolutionary War.

American basswood is a common shade tree planted in lawns, parks, and along city streets. Recognize it by its leaf shape and texture, and by the unusual strap-shaped, reduced leaf attached to the clusters of small flowers.

Its range and interesting, variable leaf shapes identify water oak. Like many species that require wet lowland forests, water oak has been declining in our state due to long-term extensive disruption of natural habitats in our Bootheel counties.

A beautiful tree, swamp white oak features bicolored leaves that are shiny, dark green above and downy white below. When a breeze sets them in motion, their wavy or lobed shapes add a calm grace to a summer's hike.

Blackjack oak is common in dry upland woods, especially ones that have been badly burned. It can grow on the poorest soils. It is rugged but not worth much as lumber. It's one of the first trees to be used as fuel.

Many Missouri trees are quite useful, and shagbark hickory is a great example. Its wood makes excellent, slow-burning charcoal, its nuts are edible, and its wood is used for many implements. Wildlife from moths to squirrels to bats appreciate shagbarks, too!

Shellbark hickory is the largest of the true hickories and has the best-tasting hickory nuts in Missouri. Compared to shagbark hickory, it has larger leaves and more leaflets, plus larger nuts and orange twigs.

Black hickory's nut, like that of the pignut hickory, is awfully hard to crack. Because rural Ozarkers noticed their hogs had no trouble extracting the sweet kernels, both species came to be called "pignut hickories."

A rugged tree of dry upland forests in the eastern Ozarks, the pignut hickory has pear-shaped fruits with thin husks. Settlers were unimpressed with the nuts’ flavor and fed them to their hogs!