Field Guide

Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants

Showing 1 - 10 of 10 results
Photo of Chinese yam showing leaves and bulbils
Chinese Yam
Dioscorea oppositifolia (sometimes called D. batatas)
Similar to kudzu, Chinese yam is an aggressive vine that overtakes nearly everything within reach that stands still long enough! Learn more about this invasive plant — and please don’t plant it!
Photo of yellow passionflower flowers.
Yellow Passion Flower
Passiflora lutea
Yellow passion flower is the smaller of Missouri’s two Passiflora species. Both are vines that climb via tendrils. This one has yellowish-green flowers about an inch wide. Look for it along and south of the Missouri River.
Photo of climbing false buckwheat vines, leaves, and flowers.
Climbing False Buckwheat (Crested Buckwheat)
Fallopia scandens (formerly Polygonum scandens)
Climbing false buckwheat is a rampant, native, annual or perennial climber that often forms curtainlike masses of twining red stems, covering shrubs and trees. Look for it in moist, open or shaded bottomlands, alluvial valleys, and floodplains.
Photo of wild potato vine flowers and leaves
Wild Potato Vine
Ipomoea pandurata
Wild potato vine is related to the sweet potatoes we buy at grocery stores. This native vine is also related to the morning glories that decorate trellises and to the bindweed that plagues gardeners and farmers.
Photo of butterfly pea plant with flowers
Butterfly Pea
Clitoria mariana
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.
Photo of sensitive brier flowers
Sensitive Briar
Mimosa quadrivalvis (also Schrankia nuttallii)
Sensitive briar is a dainty-looking legume with delicate, twice-compound leaves and flower heads resembling magenta pom-poms. The long, tough stems are covered with tiny thorns that snag your feet as you walk.
Photo of crown vetch, closeup of a flower cluster.
Crown Vetch
Securigera varia (formerly Coronilla varia)
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.
Bur cucumber flowers and foliage
Bur Cucumber
Sicyos angulatus
Bur cucumber is a nonwoody, native, annual vine common in low, moist soils. It can spread across an area 20 feet wide, covering the ground and nearby shrubs. Note its lobed, gourd-family leaves, curly green tendrils, clusters of prickly, green, oval fruits, and 5-lobed, cream-colored flowers.
Rope dodder stems
Dodders
Cuscuta spp.
Dodders are easy to identify, even though at first you might not recognize them as plants. These parasitic plants usually look like a hairlike mass of yellow or orange, leafless, wiry, vining stems wrapping around the stems of other plants.
Whorled milkweed flowers.
Milkweeds
Subfamily Asclepiadoideae
Milkweeds are a group of plants that used to have their very own family. Now part of the dogbane family, they’re still a pretty distinctive group.
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About Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants in Missouri

A very simple way of thinking about the green world is to divide the vascular plants into two groups: woody and nonwoody (or herbaceous). But this is an artificial division; many plant families include some species that are woody and some that are not. The diversity of nonwoody vascular plants is staggering! Think of all the ferns, grasses, sedges, lilies, peas, sunflowers, nightshades, milkweeds, mustards, mints, and mallows — weeds and wildflowers — and many more!