Field Guide

Cucumber magnolia is an impressive, large, broad-spreading shade tree native to southern Missouri. It is often cultivated in the eastern United States because, compared to more southern magnolias, it is relatively cold-hardy.

Of the three species of catalpas in our state, northern catalpa is the only one native to Missouri (specifically, the Bootheel region). It has been planted widely, though, and has naturalized in many places. A popular ornamental and shade tree with pretty, orchidlike flowers and long, beanlike fruit.

Gray dogwood is a deciduous, thicket-forming shrub. Its small, creamy-white flowers occur in branched clusters, and its white or pale blue fruits are supported by red stalks — a characteristic that makes it attractive for ornamental uses.

Rough-leaved dogwood is one of Missouri's hardiest shrubs, capable of withstanding cold and drought. The leaves of this thicket-forming species emit a faint odor of sour milk.

There’s no mistaking Kentucky coffee tree when its large, tough seedpods are hanging from its limbs or dropping to the ground below. Unpopular as food with today’s wildlife, these seedpods might have fed mastodons and other large, extinct North American mammals.

Black oak grows throughout Missouri, in upland woods, on glades, and along borders of woods and fields. It and scarlet oak were the primary colonizers of Ozark pinelands when the native pines were cleared in the early 1900s.

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.