Field Guide

In summer, you’re almost guaranteed to see big colonies of crown vetch along Missouri's highways. This weedy nonnative plant stabilizes the dirt after road construction but degrades our natural ecosystems.

Missouri has one introduced and four native wood sorrels. Violet wood sorrel is the only one that has magenta or lavender flowers.

Running buffalo clover spreads by sending out long, creeping runners. Now endangered, this native perennial once flourished along streams and buffalo trails throughout the grasslands of the eastern and central United States.

Small blue, lavender, or white flowers shaped like cornucopias dance along the tall stems of this Carolina larkspur, which grows in prairies and grasslands.

Ground plum is a legume that bears plumlike, edible fruits. Its short, spikelike clusters of pea flowers can be white, cream, yellow, pink, or violet.

A bushy native perennial legume with small clusters of pink flowers, slender bush clover provides nectar for numerous insects. Several types of birds eat the seeds, and many mammals eat the foliage.

Branching, spreading, and tangling, hairy vetch forms dense colonies along highways and other disturbed sites. This softly hairy ground-covering plant has one-sided clusters of purple pea flowers.

Water milfoils are feathery aquatic plants that grow rooted in shallow water. Their tips emerge above the waterline and bear bladelike, toothed leaves.

One of our more challenging plants to identify, meadow parsnip looks an awful lot like golden Alexanders. But you can do it! Look closely at the flower clusters and at the edges of the leaves, and then check the seeds.