Field Guide

Missouri has 17 species of tick trefoils, which live in a variety of habitats. Hikers know them well from their chains of hairy little seedpods that stick to clothing like parasites!

Large-flowered gaura is a tall plant whose white flowers turn pinkish as they age. Four petals point upward, then bend back, and 8 stamens droop downward. The flowers look something like small butterflies.

Purple prairie clover is a legume of prairies, glades, and other open places. Its unusual flowering heads ringed with rose-magenta flowers and its attractive foliage add special interest in the home garden.

Sensitive briar is a dainty-looking legume with delicate, twice-compound leaves and flower heads resembling magenta pom-poms. The long, tough stems are covered with tiny thorns that snag your feet as you walk.

Oblong-leaved, or aromatic aster, is well-named. It is notable for its fragrant foliage and its crowded, stalkless, clasping, hairy, narrow, oblong leaves. Like our other native asters, it blooms in late summer and fall.

The antique belief that this plant might repel fleas gives the fleabanes their name. There are more than 170 fleabanes in the genus Erigeron in North America. This one is scattered to common nearly throughout Missouri. Native Americans used this species medicinally for a variety of ailments.

Prairie alum root lifts its small, greenish, bell-shaped flowers high on a hairy stalk. The leaves are all in a basal clump, have long stalks, and look a bit like maple leaves.

Prairie blazing star has an unbranched stalk with many densely crowded, rose-purple flowerheads. It is a signature wildflower of the tallgrass prairie.

A spectacular plant of the tallgrass prairie, royal catchfly is threatened by habitat destruction and degradation throughout its range. Missouri has most of the world's populations of this noble plant.

Whorled milkweed has rounded clusters of small white flowers. The leaves are soft, threadlike, and grow in whorls from the stem. It occurs in upland prairies and fields.