Field Guide

The common dandelion is a well-known common weed of lawns, roadsides, and other disturbed places. Originally from Europe, it occurs nearly worldwide.

Lamb’s quarters won’t win any beauty contests for its flowers, but it merits an award for being both a common garden weed as well as a nutritious leafy green valued around the world.

Purple poppy mallow, a native Missouri prairie wildflower, is a favorite of wildflower gardeners. It’s easy to care for and a showy choice for formal or informal landscaping.

Violets, as a group, are fairly easy to identify, with their colorful five-petaled “faces” so welcome in springtime. Missouri has 17 species, and some are confusingly similar. This page introduces them as a group.

Ragworts, or groundsels, have several common names, and separating the different species can be a little tricky. But members of genus Packera, with their bright yellow daisy-like flowers, are distinctive as a group. Seven species have been recorded in Missouri.

Prairie ragwort is one of seven Packera species in our state. It grows in sunny, open habitats. Look for its clusters of bright yellow, daisylike flowers in May and June.

Bladderworts are Missouri’s only carnivorous plants. They are branching, rootless, aquatic plants that tend to grow in thick, floating mats under the water. The leaves are threadlike. The flowers resemble tiny yellow snapdragons and are held above the water.

Mud plantains have glossy, rounded or kidney-shaped leaves and purple or white flowers that have six petal lobes. One petal lobe points downward. They typically grow as emergent aquatic shoreline plants.

The leaf blades of plains, or wayside violet are highly variable, and the plant produces differently shaped leaves as the season progresses. It’s quite similar to cleft violet, but the leaves are smooth and hairless.