Field Guide

Two-colored flowers of pink and light yellow make goat's rue easy to identify. Look for this legume in rocky, open woods, savannas, prairies, glades, and fields.

Everlasting pea is an old-fashioned garden plant your grandma might have grown on a fence. Native to the Old World, it often persists at old homesites.

Showy clusters of blue-violet, two-lipped flowers adorn downy skullcap. This native mint is found mostly in the southern half of the state.

Dwarf spiderwort is a low-growing perennial with bright magenta, purple, or purplish-blue flowers with three petals arranged in a triangular pattern. It blooms in Ozark woodlands in April and May.

Wild comfrey has large basal leaves that are soft, hairy, and elliptical with long petioles — they look like hounds’ tongues! The upright flowering stalk has few leaves and looks like a wand.

A common component of high-quality upland prairie, American feverfew, or wild quinine, is a native wildflower that was used to treat fevers or malaria. It's in the composite family.

False garlic looks like a wild garlic or onion plant, but it doesn’t smell like one. The flowers can be white, yellowish, or greenish, and they appear in spring and sometimes also fall.

Plainleaf pussytoes, named for its fuzzy flower heads, is one of the few flowering plants in Missouri that grows well in dry and shaded areas. It’s also an indicator of acid soils.

Bastard, or false toadflax is one of the hundreds of wildflowers that bejewel our native prairies. A perennial herb with yellowish-green foliage and smooth, upright stems, it grows and flowers under the hottest conditions.

At first glance, you might overlook corn salad, except for the large colonies it often forms. The young leaves can be eaten as a salad green, hence the name.