Field Guide

One of Missouri’s most distinctive ferns, walking fern walks. Its long, triangular leaves take root at the elongated tips, forming new plantlets.

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.

River oats is a native cool-season grass that is common nearly statewide in bottomlands, stream valleys, and other moist places. The open, nodding, flattened flower and seed clusters are distinctive.

Switchgrass is a native perennial, warm-season, clump-forming mid or tall grass. In midsummer, delicate-looking, open, multiply-branching flowering clusters rise above the foliage.

Joe-Pye weeds have rounded clusters of pink or purplish flowers and leaves arranged in whorls on the stem. They are typically tall, robust plants growing in lowlands along streams. Missouri has three species.

Nine white-flowering species of thoroughworts, or bonesets, have been recorded for Missouri. They have rounded flower clusters that look rather fuzzy, because each little composite flowerhead lacks petal-like ray florets.

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.

Missouri violet is one of five Missouri stemless violets with purple or blue flowers and unlobed leaves. It is distinguished by its triangular or heart-shaped leaves that are longer than wide and are coarsely toothed only on the basal two-thirds.