Field Guide

Missouri gooseberry is our state’s most widespread and common gooseberry. People brave its prickly stems to collect its tart, tasty fruits to make pies, jams, and jellies.

Bristly greenbrier is a stout woody vine with bristlelike black spines, climbing high by tendrils to a length of 40 feet. It is the most common greenbrier in Missouri and is found statewide.

Summer grape is a vigorous, woody, wild grapevine climbing to a height of 35 feet. It grows mostly in the southern two-thirds of Missouri, often in drier situations than many other grape species.

Frost grape is a vigorous vine climbing to 60 feet in length using tendrils. It is scattered statewide, growing in bottomlands, along streams, in low, wet woods, at bases of bluffs, and in thickets.

Riverbank grape is a woody wild grape vine climbing to 75 feet by means of tendrils. It occurs nearly statewide but is absent from most of the Ozark plateau.

Eight species of grapes in the genus Vitis are native or naturalized in Missouri. All bear edible fruits. Like their relatives elsewhere, they have important connections to humans and to nature.

Farkleberry, or sparkleberry, is a stiff-branched shrub or small crooked tree growing in loose thickets on rocky soils, mostly south of the Missouri River. A type of blueberry, its black fruits are edible but dry and mealy.

Southern black haw is an irregularly branched shrub with shiny, dark green, opposite leaves whose lower surface is paler with scattered rusty hairs, especially on the veins. It bears clusters of white flowers, which turn into bluish-black fruits.

Black raspberries resemble blackberries, but when ripe, the fruits fall away as a caplike unit from the receptacle. Leaflets appear white underneath. The canes are whitish-coated when young; they arch down and take root at the tips. Native and scattered statewide.