Field Guide

Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants

Showing 1 - 10 of 413 results
Media
Photo of eastern gama grass flowering plant
Species Types
Scientific Name
Tripsacum dactyloides
Description
Eastern gama grass is a native perennial bunch grass with flowering stalks up to 8 feet tall. The fingerlike seed heads have separate male and female florets. The seed-bearing, female florets are in the lower portion of each spike. It occurs statewide and is an important component of native prairies and glades.
Media
Photo of sideoats grama, closeup on floral spikes showing orange anthers.
Species Types
Scientific Name
Bouteloua curtipendula
Description
Sideoats grama is a native perennial clump-forming grass with flowering stalks 1–3 feet tall. The oatlike seeds dangle uniformly in two rows on one side of the flattened stalk. It occurs nearly statewide.
Media
Photo of Japanese stiltgrass
Species Types
Scientific Name
Microstegium vimineum
Description
Japanese stiltgrass is an invasive annual grass with thin, pale green, lance-shaped leaves that are 3 inches long. It has spread to nearly every eastern U.S. state. It forms dense patches, displacing and outcompeting native species for nutrients and light.
Media
Photo of common scouring rush, many stems in a colony
Species Types
Scientific Name
Equisetum (3 spp. in Missouri)
Description
Horsetails, or scouring rushes, are in the genus Equisetum. They’re easy to recognize with their jointed, hollow stems. Like ferns, they reproduce via spores instead of flowers and seeds.
Media
Marginal shield fern fronds, showing outer tips
Species Types
Scientific Name
Dryopteris marginalis
Description
Marginal shield fern is an evergreen fern with scaly rhizomes and leaf stalks. It grows in bouquet-like clusters on shaded ledges of sandstone bluffs and rock outcrops.
Media
Photo of an ebony spleenwort plant growing among moss and fallen leaves
Species Types
Scientific Name
Asplenium platyneuron
Description
Ebony spleenwort is a common forest-floor fern with wiry, shiny, dark brown leaf stalks and a ladderlike series of dark green, narrowly oblong leaflets.
Media
Photo of a sensitive fern, vegetative leaf
Species Types
Scientific Name
Onoclea sensibilis
Description
The leaves of sensitive fern usually wither quickly upon the first frost, leaving the upright, beadlike, spore-bearing spikes to be noticeable.
Media
Photo of a northern maidenhair fern
Species Types
Scientific Name
Adiantum spp. (2 in Missouri)
Description
Maidenhair ferns are distinctive and beautiful. Their leaflet veins divide by twos over and over, forming a fan pattern.
Media
Walking fern colony growing on a boulder at Clifty Creek CA showing numerous long tapering fronds
Species Types
Scientific Name
Asplenium rhizophyllum (syn. Camptosorus rhyzophyllus)
Description
One of Missouri’s most distinctive ferns, walking fern walks. Its long, triangular leaves take root at the elongated tips, forming new plantlets.
Media
Photo of Christmas fern leaves lying against fallen oak leaves
Species Types
Scientific Name
Polystichum acrostichoides
Description
Christmas fern is one of the most common ferns in Missouri woodlands. Its leathery leaves are evergreen, and pioneers used it for making Christmas wreaths.
See Also

About Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants in Missouri

A very simple way of thinking about the green world is to divide the vascular plants into two groups: woody and nonwoody (or herbaceous). But this is an artificial division; many plant families include some species that are woody and some that are not. The diversity of nonwoody vascular plants is staggering! Think of all the ferns, grasses, sedges, lilies, peas, sunflowers, nightshades, milkweeds, mustards, mints, and mallows — weeds and wildflowers — and many more!