Field Guide

Every Missourian should know big bluestem. It is the most famous of our native prairie grasses. The seed head of this tall grass branches into three parts, resembling a turkey’s foot.

With its white, petal-like ray florets and pale disc florets, upland white goldenrod is truly the oddball of the goldenrods: it looks like a white-flowered aster. Indeed, it used to be considered an aster.

Missouri has 24 species of New World asters in genus Symphyotrichum. Most have purple or white ray flowers and yellow disk flowers that turn reddish over time. Most bloom in late summer and fall.

Prairie dogtooth violet, or prairie trout lily, is a small, early blooming lily that lives in prairies and glades. Its flowers are white and its narrow leaves are folded lengthwise and seem waxy on the undersurface.

River oats is a native cool-season grass that is common nearly statewide in bottomlands, stream valleys, and other moist places. The open, nodding, flattened flower and seed clusters are distinctive.

Switchgrass is a native perennial, warm-season, clump-forming mid or tall grass. In midsummer, delicate-looking, open, multiply-branching flowering clusters rise above the foliage.

A native of Europe, Timothy is a common cool-season pasture grass and occurs in a wide variety of open or disturbed habitats. It is one of the worst causes of hay fever in the late spring and early summer.

Virginia wild rye can be identified by its bristly seed heads, which are held erect and whose bristle-like awns stay straight. This is a common native perennial tuft-forming, cool-season midgrass usually reaching about 2–4 feet in height.