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.

Mullein immigrated to America along with Europeans, and with them it has spread across the continent. Its fuzzy, green-gray rosettes of leaves and tall spikes of yellow flowers make it easy to identify.

Small blue, lavender, or white flowers shaped like cornucopias dance along the tall stems of this Carolina larkspur, which grows in prairies and grasslands.

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.

These two species of sweet clover are present all over America. Although they have been planted for forage, as bee plants, and as nitrogen-fixers, white and yellow sweet clover are now classified as invasive for their weediness and the problems they pose for natural habitats.

Butterfly pea is a low, shrubby, or twining perennial in the pea family, with showy, butterfly-like flowers. The leaves are compound with three leaflets. This species grows in the southern parts of Missouri, in acid soils.

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.

Blue false indigo is a native bushy perennial with three-parted compound leaves and showy, upright stalks of blue pea flowers. The seedpods are inflated and turn black upon maturity, and the seeds rattle around in the dry pods.

White wild indigo is the tallest species of false indigo in Missouri. It has a robust, striking presence, with white flowers and a shrubby look. Look for it statewide, in prairies and glades and along roadsides, streams, and valleys.

Long-bracted wild indigo flowers April–June, while the surrounding vegetation is still short. Its racemes of creamy-white pea flowers mature into oval pods with tapering beaks.