Field Guide

Swamp milkweed has pink flower clusters at the tips of its tall stalks. The leaves are opposite, narrow, and up to 6 inches long. It grows in moist bottomland soils.

The flowers of purple milkweed are pale purple to reddish purple to dark purple, with greenish or red tints. The scientific name means “becoming purple”: The flowers start off rather pale and become more intensely purplish as they mature.

Blue cardinal flower, or blue lobelia, is a showy, late-blooming native wildflower that grows along streams, ditches, sloughs, and other wet places. It has blue or purple tubular flowers with 2 upper lips and 3 lower lips.

Clasping Venus' looking glass is a single-stemmed plant with purple or blue star-shaped flowers and bluntly toothed, alternate leaves that clasp the stem. It's scattered statewide in a variety of habitats and blooms May-June.

Indian hemp is a shrubby, upright perennial with opposite branches and milky sap. This native plant can be a troublesome weed in crop fields and gardens, but Native Americans used its tough, fibrous stems for rope-making.

Often found on gravelly Ozark streamsides, shining blue star lifts its clusters of showy, light-blue flowers in late spring. A top choice for native wildflower gardening, it is interesting spring, summer, and fall.

When you consider the negative effects this plant has on natural habitats, and how hard it is to control or eradicate, you almost want to rename it “leafy scourge”! This invasive plant is spreading in our state. Learn how to identify it.

One of several native plants called dandelions, Carolina false dandelion is an annual with sulphur yellow flowers and puffy seedheads.

There are several members of the aster family that look something like common dandelions. But unlike the familiar lawn weed, two-flowered Cynthia is a native Missouri wildflower.

With its yellow composite flowers and round seedheads of fluffy “parachutes,” goat’s beard looks like a gigantic dandelion. A native of Europe, many people view it as an invasive weed.