Field Guide

Two-colored flowers of pink and light yellow make goat's rue easy to identify. Look for this legume in rocky, open woods, savannas, prairies, glades, and fields.

Blue false indigo is a native bushy perennial with three-parted compound leaves and showy, upright stalks of blue pea flowers. The seedpods are inflated and turn black upon maturity, and the seeds rattle around in the dry pods.

Long-bracted wild indigo flowers April–June, while the surrounding vegetation is still short. Its racemes of creamy-white pea flowers mature into oval pods with tapering beaks.

A member of the buttercup family, thimbleweed is named for the thimble-shaped dome of fruits that are densely packed at the center of the flower. Look for it blooming from late April through August in rocky or dry open woods and prairies.

A common component of high-quality upland prairie, American feverfew, or wild quinine, is a native wildflower that was used to treat fevers or malaria. It's in the composite family.

Indian physic, or American ipecac, is a leafy plant that can cover entire hills in the Ozarks. Native Americans used it as an emetic for internal cleansing, a widespread ceremonial custom.

False garlic looks like a wild garlic or onion plant, but it doesn’t smell like one. The flowers can be white, yellowish, or greenish, and they appear in spring and sometimes also fall.

Plainleaf pussytoes, named for its fuzzy flower heads, is one of the few flowering plants in Missouri that grows well in dry and shaded areas. It’s also an indicator of acid soils.

At first glance, you might overlook corn salad, except for the large colonies it often forms. The young leaves can be eaten as a salad green, hence the name.

One of Missouri's five types of echinacea, pale purple coneflower is distinguished by its white pollen, drooping pink or purple ray flowers, and narrow, tapering leaves. It occurs nearly statewide, except for the Bootheel lowlands.