Field Guide

Wild onion is edible and is also favored by native-plant gardeners, who enjoy its showy umbels of pink flowers and tolerance of dry, rocky sites. This Ozark species blooms in summer and fall.

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

Rough blazing star is fairly common and scattered nearly statewide. To distinguish between Missouri’s nine species in the genus Liatris, start by noting details of the flower structure. It’s not hard when you know what to look for.

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.

Nodding ladies’ tresses is the most common of Missouri’s eight species of ladies' tresses. The flowers are arranged in a spiral pattern on the upright flowering stem. Each small flower is a little white orchid.

It has grasslike leaves, but it’s not a grass. In fact, it’s in the same family as the common garden iris! Four species of blue-eyed grass grow in Missouri, and this one, often found on prairies, glades, and pastures, is the most common.

Yellow star grass grows throughout the tallgrass prairie region. Imagine the thoughts of pioneers when they gazed upon these bright little lilies during stops along their westward journey!

Missouri’s cattails are all tall wetland plants with narrow, upright leaves emerging from a thick base, and a central stalk bearing a brown, sausage-shaped flower spike.

These aquatic algae look like regular vascular plants. Chara has a crisp, gritty texture, a musky odor, and gray-green, needlelike structures that resemble leaves.