Field Guide

Fire pink is a low, clump-forming perennial with many slender, spreading stems that are sticky from glandular hairs, with open clusters of bright red flowers. This showy native Missouri plant is growing in popularity among home gardeners.

Called “crane’s bill” for its sharply pointed seed capsules, wild geranium is a gardening favorite, and there are cultivated varieties of this woodland wildflower bred for unique petal and leaf colors.

Common cinquefoil, or five-finger, is named for its leaves, which are divided into five fingerlike leaflets. One of seven cinquefoils in Missouri, it blooms from April to June and is scattered nearly statewide.

“Infestation” is the term for what teasels are doing in Missouri. Learn to identify these thistlelike plants, and help to control the weedy spread of these tough, prickly invaders.

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.

At first glance, you might overlook corn salad, except for the large colonies it often forms. The young leaves can be eaten as a salad green, hence the name.

A spectacular plant of the tallgrass prairie, royal catchfly is threatened by habitat destruction and degradation throughout its range. Missouri has most of the world's populations of this noble plant.

Foxglove, or smooth beardtongue is a showy flower that is popular in native gardening. It is the tallest of the four white-flowered penstemons in Missouri.

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.