Field Guide

The handsome violet-blue flower spikes of pickerel weed stand out vividly at the edges of ponds. One of our few blue-flowering pond plants, pickerel weed is easy to identify by its color alone.

A plant of shorelines and shallow water, tall burhead has clusters of beaked seeds that develop in the fall. Hundreds of these spiny seed heads, held in clusters above the water, make it distinctive.

With their whorl of oval leaves with thick, ridged stems, water plantains look like giant versions of the plantains that commonly appear in yards. Water plantains are water-edge plants that bear large, branching stalks of tiny white flowers.

Showy lady’s slipper is a beautiful and rare wildflower. This orchid can be more than 3 feet tall, with showy flowers with a pink-suffused, inflated lower lip. In Missouri, it's restricted to the southern portion of the Ozarks.

Showy orchis is a perennial wildflower of rich, moist, shady woods, slopes, ravines, and stream valleys, often found with other spring wildflowers. It’s about 6 inches tall when it produces its beautiful pink and white flowers.

Butterweed, one of Missouri’s seven species of ragworts or groundsels, is the only one that is an annual. It grows in colonies, at times covering acres of floodplain. Stems are heavily ridged and usually inflated or hollow. It blooms April–June.

Common periwinkle is a low-growing, mat-forming, purple-flowering perennial that is woody at the base. Native to Eurasia, it is often grown as a groundcover. It has proven invasive in much of the eastern United States and frequently escapes from cultivation. Planting it is not recommended.