Field Guide

An annual, spring-blooming wildflower, Miami mist has loose coils of small blue flowers with distinctive, delicate fringes on the petal lobes.

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.

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.

Moth mullein is a native of Eurasia introduced to our continent in the early 1800s. Since then, it has spread across North America. It’s named because the fuzzy flower, with 2 antennalike stamens, looks something like a moth.

Rock pink is a succulent perennial with slender, naked flower stalks and bright magenta flowers that usually don't open until after noon. Leaves are basal and fleshy, to 2 inches long. Look for this plant in glades and other hot, dry, rocky places.

White anemone is a showy native wildflower with interesting, deeply toothed leaves. Often occurring in colonies, it spreads easily (even aggressively) from rhizomes and is sometimes cultivated in wildflower gardens.

Tall bellflower is an abundant native bellflower that is easily identified by its stout, tall habit, short, wheel-shaped, blue corolla, and the curved, purple style that projects beyond the flower.

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.

A low-growing wildflower that can colonize large areas along roadsides, showy evening primrose bears pink or white flowers that seem too large for the vegetation that supports them.

Woollen breeches bears clusters of light blue, bell-shaped flowers. The lower leaves of this hairy plant are shaped something like maple leaves and often have grayish or light green marks that look like water stains.