Field Guide

Red mulberry is native to Missouri and North America. You can distinguish it from the introduced white mulberry tree, which is a noxious weed, by its leaves and fruits.

The white, smooth-looking limbs of sycamore rise over countless streams and river banks, as well as over sidewalks and city streets. The leaves, which somewhat resemble those of maples, can reach remarkably large sizes.

Red maple is one of our most useful — and beautiful — native trees. You can find it in the woods as well as in landscape plantings statewide. Many horticultural varieties are available at nurseries.

In nature, silver maple is a bottomland tree. Silver maples pay for their rapid growth by having rather brittle branches that easily break off in windy and other inclement weather.

The star-shaped leaves of sweet gum become even more striking in the autumn, when they turn various shades of gold, red, pink, and purple, often on the same tree — sometimes even on the same leaf!

A member of the maple family, box elder is often confused with poison ivy because its compound leaves sometimes grow in threes (though also in fives). A fast-growing tree, its winged seeds betray its relationship to other maples.

Ozark witch-hazel is a large native shrub that grows along dry, rocky streambeds in southern and east-central Missouri. The yellow, ribbonlike flowers bloom as early as January. In the fall, the seeds are ejected forcefully, to a distance of up to 30 feet!

Shumard oak is worth knowing: it can rise to 100 feet in height and gain a trunk diameter of 5 feet, with wide-spreading, muscular boughs.

Pin oak is one of the easiest trees to recognize by its shape alone: It has a tall, straight trunk, an overall pyramidal or conical shape and, most notably, the branches on the lower third of the tree angle downward.

In Missouri, Nuttall's oak grows naturally only in Bootheel. With its limited range, and with steady destruction of its habitat, it has become rare and imperiled within our borders.