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.

In springtime, bird's-foot violet can make a glade or bluff top heavenly with its pretty lavender and purple "faces." When you see your first big colony of bird's-foot violets, you will probably never forget it.

The yellow violet is Missouri's only all-yellow violet. This native wildflower is less common than violet violets. Look for it in low woods, rich slopes, and wooded floodplains.

The flowers of blue-eyed Mary are only about a half inch wide, but this pretty wildflower makes up for it by usually appearing in abundance, covering a patch of forest floor with little sky-blue and white “faces.”

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

Wood nettle, or stinging nettle, often forms dense stands in bottomland forests, streamsides, and other places. There, canoeists, anglers, and others try to avoid touching its stinging hairs!

A biennial plant with bristly hairs and usually with single stems, viper’s bugloss can grow 2½ feet tall. The flowers are pink in bud, blue to ultramarine later. The protruding stamens are pink.

Horse nettle is a native perennial with spiny stems and leaves, white to purplish flowers, and toxic fruits that look like tiny yellow tomatoes. It does well in disturbed habitats, and many people consider it a weed.

Horseweed looks something like a goldenrod, except that the tiny composite flowers are not yellow. Instead, they are cream-colored and rather drab. In Missouri, this plant is especially associated with disturbed habitats and is a troublesome crop weed.

You may not recognize elephant’s foot as a member of the daisy or sunflower family because it lacks petal-like ray florets. Also, it has unusual, doubly compound flower clusters. And how did it get its name, anyway?