Field Guide

Our most widely distributed early spring flower, spring beauty has 5 white or pink petals with distinct pink veining, and 5 pink anthers. The narrow, bladelike leaves are fleshy. These flowers often grow in abundance, covering a patch of ground with the beauty of spring.

Rough blazing star is fairly common and scattered nearly statewide. To distinguish between Missouri’s nine species in the genus Liatris, start by noting details of the flower structure. It’s not hard when you know what to look for.

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.

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.

White heath aster is one of Missouri's most widespread and weedy native asters. It grows in uplands, bottomlands, and nearly all habitats in between. It has a shrubby, wide-branching habit, and the stem leaves are thin and needlelike.

Square, unbranching stems, opposite leaves, two-lipped flowers, and a mild minty fragrance are clues Ohio horsemint is in the mint family. Tight, rounded flower clusters are stacked atop one another at the stem tips.

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!

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

Slender false foxglove, or common gerardia, is a small, showy wildflower with slender, opposite leaves and thin, wiry, branching stems. The small, funnel-shaped blossoms are pink or purple, with an upper lip that arches over the 4 hairy stamens.

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.