Field Guide

Rock pink is a succulent perennial with slender, naked flower stalks and bright magenta flowers that usually don't open until after noon. Leaves are basal and fleshy, to 2 inches long. Look for this plant in glades and other hot, dry, rocky places.

In spring, wild hyacinth bears an elongated cluster of pale blue flowers with prominent anthers that sway on stalks up to 2 feet tall.

Tall bellflower is an abundant native bellflower that is easily identified by its stout, tall habit, short, wheel-shaped, blue corolla, and the curved, purple style that projects beyond the flower.

Celestial lily, in the iris family, blooms only in the morning. Its showy, lavender-blue flowers shine like six-pointed stars on glades and prairies in southern Missouri and the eastern Ozarks.

Called “crane’s bill” for its sharply pointed seed capsules, wild geranium is a gardening favorite, and there are cultivated varieties of this woodland wildflower bred for unique petal and leaf colors.

Woollen breeches bears clusters of light blue, bell-shaped flowers. The lower leaves of this hairy plant are shaped something like maple leaves and often have grayish or light green marks that look like water stains.

Although the funnel-shaped, 5-lobed flowers look something like the petunias you find at garden centers, our wild petunia is not related to them. This ruellia often has crinkled hairs in 2 narrow, lengthwise bands on opposite sides of the stalk.

As pretty as this wildflower is, the common name “Jacob’s Ladder” comes from its ladderlike leaves, which made people think of the story from Genesis in which Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching up to heaven.

The flower of wake robin, or trillium, has 3 petals and 3 sepals, and 3 leaves that subtend the solitary flower. The petal color varies in this common woodland spring wildflower, but it is most commonly brownish or maroon.

Ozark wake robin is a rare trillium that grows in the southern Ozarks of Missouri. It lives in shady locations in upland hardwood forests.