Field Guide

Wild strawberry is one of the parents of the cultivated strawberry and is one of our prized native wild edibles. It’s also a valuable food for innumerable animals, and it’s attractive in native wildflower gardens.

Common cinquefoil, or five-finger, is named for its leaves, which are divided into five fingerlike leaflets. One of seven cinquefoils in Missouri, it blooms from April to June and is scattered nearly statewide.

Wood betony has a tight spiral of tubular, hooded yellow flowers atop a plant adorned with deeply incised, fernlike leaves that are about as attractive as the flowers themselves. In early spring, these leaves have a beautiful wine-red coloration.

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.

A true lettuce that can be eaten as a cooked or salad green, Florida lettuce has lavender to purplish blue flowers and grows statewide.

Clasping Venus' looking glass is a single-stemmed plant with purple or blue star-shaped flowers and bluntly toothed, alternate leaves that clasp the stem. It's scattered statewide in a variety of habitats and blooms May-June.

Most common in the Ozarks, round-leaved groundsel is one of seven Packera species in our state. Its showy, bright yellow, daisylike flowers form flat-topped clusters that arise from sparsely leaved stems.

Golden aster can cover entire valleys with its bright yellow flowers. It blooms June through October and is scattered mostly south of the Missouri River.

Yellow crownbeard and its close relatives are called wingstems because of lengthwise, winged ridges along the stems. Look for it blooming, May through October, in open and rocky areas.

This native lily looks a lot like the Asian “tiger lily” that is commonly cultivated in gardens. Michigan lily, however, has leaves mostly in whorls and lacks the round “bulblets” that tiger lily forms in its leaf axils.