Field Guide

Japanese stiltgrass is an invasive annual grass with thin, pale green, lance-shaped leaves that are 3 inches long. It has spread to nearly every eastern U.S. state. It forms dense patches, displacing and outcompeting native species for nutrients and light.

In spring, wild hyacinth bears an elongated cluster of pale blue flowers with prominent anthers that sway on stalks up to 2 feet tall.

Rough blazing star is fairly common and scattered nearly statewide. To distinguish between Missouri’s nine species in the genus Liatris, start by noting details of the flower structure. It’s not hard when you know what to look for.

There are 23 species of goldenrods in Missouri. They can be hard to identify to species, but as a group, the goldenrods are common and nearly unmistakable.

Missouri’s cattails are all tall wetland plants with narrow, upright leaves emerging from a thick base, and a central stalk bearing a brown, sausage-shaped flower spike.

These aquatic algae look like regular vascular plants. Chara has a crisp, gritty texture, a musky odor, and gray-green, needlelike structures that resemble leaves.

Native to Europe and Asia, orange day lily was widely planted by early settlers and has become widely naturalized in North America. The seeds don't mature in Missouri, so all the plants here are spread by root divisions.

Our weediest sneezeweed, bitterweed arrived in Missouri in the late 1800s from its home range in Texas and Louisiana. Like our other heleniums, it has domed disks and yellow, fan-shaped, notched ray florets. Unlike them, the leaves are narrowly linear.

White heath aster is one of Missouri's most widespread and weedy native asters. It grows in uplands, bottomlands, and nearly all habitats in between. It has a shrubby, wide-branching habit, and the stem leaves are thin and needlelike.