Field Guide

A spiny annual with bright yellow flowers and dandelion-like leaves, buffalo bur is an introduced member of the nightshade family.

Common ground cherry is closely related to the tomatillo, which you’ve probably seen in the grocery store or had in a delicious salsa verde at a Mexican restaurant. The fruits of ground cherry are edible, too.

You can find small colonies of lance-leaved loosestrife nearly throughout the state. It has showy but nodding yellow flowers and opposite, closely spaced, lanceolate or ovate leaves.

Horse nettle is a native perennial with spiny stems and leaves, white to purplish flowers, and toxic fruits that look like tiny yellow tomatoes. It does well in disturbed habitats, and many people consider it a weed.

Ox-eye daisy, though familiar, is not native to North America. It was introduced long ago from Eurasia. Common in grassy uplands, pastures, fencerows, and roadsides, it can colonize aggressively in the garden.

Native to Ozark glades and prairies, tickseed coreopsis has long been appreciated as a hardy garden perennial. Because of its popularity, it has escaped from cultivation and now occurs statewide.

Found mainly in the southern half of the state, in prairies and glades, prairie parsley is an upright, stout-stemmed perennial with small yellow flowers in umbrella-shaped clusters. It blooms April through June.

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.

Named for its resemblance to a European herb that was popular in Medieval times, golden Alexanders is a native Missouri wildflower with bright yellow flowers arranged in umbrella-like clusters.

The showiest of Missouri’s wallflowers, western wallflower grows on limestone bluffs, glades, and sometimes road cuts, mostly in our central counties. Often a biennial, this mustard cannot be relied on to appear each year.