Field Guide

One of Missouri's five types of echinacea, pale purple coneflower is distinguished by its white pollen, drooping pink or purple ray flowers, and narrow, tapering leaves. It occurs nearly statewide, except for the Bootheel lowlands.

Missouri has 17 species of tick trefoils, which live in a variety of habitats. Hikers know them well from their chains of hairy little seedpods that stick to clothing like parasites!

Purple prairie clover is a legume of prairies, glades, and other open places. Its unusual flowering heads ringed with rose-magenta flowers and its attractive foliage add special interest in the home garden.

Sensitive briar is a dainty-looking legume with delicate, twice-compound leaves and flower heads resembling magenta pom-poms. The long, tough stems are covered with tiny thorns that snag your feet as you walk.

Oblong-leaved, or aromatic aster, is well-named. It is notable for its fragrant foliage and its crowded, stalkless, clasping, hairy, narrow, oblong leaves. Like our other native asters, it blooms in late summer and fall.

One of our showiest native fall-blooming wildflowers, New England aster contributes to Missouri's colorful autumn landscape. The petallike ray florets of wild plants range from reddish purple to purple.

The antique belief that this plant might repel fleas gives the fleabanes their name. There are more than 170 fleabanes in the genus Erigeron in North America. This one is scattered to common nearly throughout Missouri. Native Americans used this species medicinally for a variety of ailments.

Prairie blazing star has an unbranched stalk with many densely crowded, rose-purple flowerheads. It is a signature wildflower of the tallgrass prairie.

The large, showy, rose-purple flower heads of purple coneflower make it a standout in open woodlands as well as in the home garden. The genus name, Echinacea, means “hedgehog” and refers to the flower’s spiny center cone.

Wild four-o’clock grows in fields, prairies, waste places, roadways, and railroads, often in poor soils. It’s called “four-o’clock,” because the magenta flowers don’t open until late afternoon.