Field Guide

In summer and fall, the pretty blue flowers of chicory decorate roadsides and other disturbed areas. This weedy member of the aster family was introduced from Europe long ago. Its roots have been used as a coffee substitute.

Swamp milkweed has pink flower clusters at the tips of its tall stalks. The leaves are opposite, narrow, and up to 6 inches long. It grows in moist bottomland soils.

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.

Mead's milkweed, an endangered wildflower, once flourished in the tallgrass prairies of the midwestern United States, including most of Missouri.

Whorled milkweed has rounded clusters of small white flowers. The leaves are soft, threadlike, and grow in whorls from the stem. It occurs in upland prairies and fields.

One of our earliest blooming milkweeds, fourleaf milkweed bears round clusters of pink or cream-colored flowers. As the common names suggest, at least some of the leaves are arranged in whorls of 4.

Prairie milkweed’s full, rounded clusters of small, delicately purple-tinged flowers set it apart from other prairie milkweeds.

With widespread sprays of small white flowers, flowering spurge looks a lot like the "baby's breath" so popular with florists. Each little "flower" has 5 white false petals surrounding a cup of tiny yellow male flowers and a single female flower.

Milkweeds are a group of plants that used to have their very own family. Now part of the dogbane family, they’re still a pretty distinctive group.