Field Guide

The interesting, bright yellow flowers of showy partridge pea are immediately recognizable. At night, the leaflets close and pull upward into a sleeping position.

Dead nettle, like its close relative henbit, is a common, weedy mint that, in early spring, can carpet wide patches of disturbed ground. Recognize dead nettle by the pyramidal look of its purple- or blue-tinted foliage.

In summer, you’re almost guaranteed to see big colonies of crown vetch along Missouri's highways. This weedy nonnative plant stabilizes the dirt after road construction but degrades our natural ecosystems.

An annual, spring-blooming wildflower, Miami mist has loose coils of small blue flowers with distinctive, delicate fringes on the petal lobes.

Small bluet is a mat-forming winter annual that can color entire lawns blue with its tiny flowers. You can start learning to recognize it by noting the reddish-purple color at the center of the blue-violet flowers.

Johnny-jump-up is a flat-faced violet whose small flowers are a washed-out blue or violet with a very light yellow or white center. Look for it in fields, meadows, glades, rights-of-way, disturbed sites, and possibly your front lawn.

Like the common dandelion, English plantain should be familiar to every Missourian. This perennial herb occurs in fields, lawns, roadsides, and other disturbed habitats.

Shepherd’s purse is a plant that started in Europe and western Asia and has been introduced nearly worldwide. Like the common dandelion, it has several adaptations that make it a successful colonizer of disturbed soil.

Yellow rocket is a mustard native to Eurasia that was introduced long ago and today is found across North America. The mustard family used to be called the Cruciferae, because of the cross shape formed by the four petals.

Next time you breeze past weedy black mustard on the highway or spot it in a fallow field, think of how important this and other mustards are to the world economy – and to your dinner table.