Field Guide

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.

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.

Water milfoils are feathery aquatic plants that grow rooted in shallow water. Their tips emerge above the waterline and bear bladelike, toothed leaves.

Naiads are slender, narrow-leaved plants that grow completely under water and are rooted to the bottom. They never have broad, floating leaves or conspicuous flowers or seed heads.

Coontail, a common submerged aquatic plant, got its name from the crowded upper leaves, which make the stem tip appear bushy like the tail of a raccoon.