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.

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.

Queen Anne’s lace is many things to many people — roadside wildflower, noxious introduced weed, wild edible, medicinal herb, delightful cut flower. In Missouri, it blooms May through October.

Two-colored flowers of pink and light yellow make goat's rue easy to identify. Look for this legume in rocky, open woods, savannas, prairies, glades, and fields.

Everlasting pea is an old-fashioned garden plant your grandma might have grown on a fence. Native to the Old World, it often persists at old homesites.

Native to North America, Europe, and Asia, yarrow has been used for medicine and magic for millennia. This aromatic plant has fine, hairy, fernlike leaves and flat-topped clusters of little white flowers.

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.