Field Guide

Most people recognize sunflowers when they see them, with their bright yellow ray flowers and rather flattened center of dark disk flowers. There are 16 species of Helianthus in Missouri.

Missouri has 24 species of New World asters in genus Symphyotrichum. Most have purple or white ray flowers and yellow disk flowers that turn reddish over time. Most bloom in late summer and fall.

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.

Purslane can be an aggressive pest in gardens and is one of the worst agricultural weeds in the world. Meanwhile, it’s also a favorite wild vegetable served cooked or raw, and many people cultivate it.

Curly dock’s rosettes of wavy-edged, leathery leaves are a common sight on roadsides and other disturbed lands. The fruit clusters at the top half of the plant turn dark rusty brown and are easy to spot from a distance.

Five species of ironweeds live in Missouri. Starting in the middle of summer, they bear showy clusters of magenta or purple flowerheads at the branching tops of upright stalks.

Violets, as a group, are fairly easy to identify, with their colorful five-petaled “faces” so welcome in springtime. Missouri has 17 species, and some are confusingly similar. This page introduces them as a group.

Pale violet, or cream violet, is Missouri’s only white-flowering violet that produces true aboveground stems. It is scattered to common in the Ozarks, Ozark border, and Bootheel lowlands and uncommon or absent elsewhere in the state.

Ragworts, or groundsels, have several common names, and separating the different species can be a little tricky. But members of genus Packera, with their bright yellow daisy-like flowers, are distinctive as a group. Seven species have been recorded in Missouri.

Virginia knotweed, or jumpseed, is common yet rarely contemplated. It might be most eye-catching in spring, when its new, oval leaves are marked with brownish Vs. In summer, it blooms with tiny, teardrop-shaped white flowers on wandlike stems.