Field Guide

White ash leaves turn shades of yellow and purple in fall, and that is one reason it has been a popular landscaping tree. Many birds and mammals feed on the paddle-shaped seeds.

Existing in thousands of acres of nearly pure stands, shortleaf pine was once the dominant tree in much of the Missouri Ozarks. Today, Missouri’s only native pine tree is recovering from the extensive logging that had exhausted its old-growth stands by the 1920s.

By far the most common native conifer in the state, eastern red cedar is useful for its aromatic, red wood and beloved for its greenery, its resinous blue “berries,” and the spicy odor it lends the outdoors.

Sassafras, with its aromatic oval, mitten- , and trident-shaped leaves, is rich in both human and natural history, and it can be a spectacular tree for fall color.

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.

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!

Water hickory grows on ground that is often under water during part of the year. The bitter nuts are consumed by ducks and other wildlife.

Missouri is rich with hickory trees. Mockernut hickory stands out from the rest for its hard wood, thick-shelled fruit enclosing relatively small kernels, large and light-colored terminal buds, and tight, never shaggy, bark.