Field Guide

When you consider the negative effects this plant has on natural habitats, and how hard it is to control or eradicate, you almost want to rename it “leafy scourge”! This invasive plant is spreading in our state. Learn how to identify it.

Branching, spreading, and tangling, hairy vetch forms dense colonies along highways and other disturbed sites. This softly hairy ground-covering plant has one-sided clusters of purple pea flowers.

One of several native plants called dandelions, Carolina false dandelion is an annual with sulphur yellow flowers and puffy seedheads.

A native wildflower of forests, blufftops, glades, pastures, and roadsides, beaked hawkweed looks something like a hairy, yellow-flowering chicory. It is found mostly south of the Missouri River.

Yellow crownbeard and its close relatives are called wingstems because of lengthwise, winged ridges along the stems. Look for it blooming, May through October, in open and rocky areas.

Yellow wood sorrel is both a garden weed and a wild edible. It has a pleasant sour taste, which is why some people call it sourgrass and add it to salads.

Pondweeds are rooted aquatic plants with underwater leaves on long, flexible, jointed stems. Some have floating leaves, too, that are differently shaped. Missouri has about 10 species in the pondweed genus.

Water milfoils are feathery aquatic plants that grow rooted in shallow water. Their tips emerge above the waterline and bear bladelike, toothed leaves.

A tall, smooth, branching plant with red stems and juicy, dark purple berries, pokeweed is both toxic and a traditional edible potherb called poke salat. It is common statewide.

The flowers of dayflower are truly blue, and they have only two conspicuous petals. A fast-growing, sprawling, but shallow-rooted weed, this introduced species commonly annoys gardeners.