Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Tripsacum dactyloides
Description
Eastern gama grass is a native perennial bunch grass with flowering stalks up to 8 feet tall. The fingerlike seed heads have separate male and female florets. The seed-bearing, female florets are in the lower portion of each spike. It occurs statewide and is an important component of native prairies and glades.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Bouteloua curtipendula
Description
Sideoats grama is a native perennial clump-forming grass with flowering stalks 1–3 feet tall. The oatlike seeds dangle uniformly in two rows on one side of the flattened stalk. It occurs nearly statewide.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Microstegium vimineum
Description
Japanese stiltgrass is an invasive annual grass with thin, pale green, lance-shaped leaves that are 3 inches long. It has spread to nearly every eastern U.S. state. It forms dense patches, displacing and outcompeting native species for nutrients and light.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Equisetum (3 spp. in Missouri)
Description
Horsetails, or scouring rushes, are in the genus Equisetum. They’re easy to recognize with their jointed, hollow stems. Like ferns, they reproduce via spores instead of flowers and seeds.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Dryopteris marginalis
Description
Marginal shield fern is an evergreen fern with scaly rhizomes and leaf stalks. It grows in bouquet-like clusters on shaded ledges of sandstone bluffs and rock outcrops.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Asplenium platyneuron
Description
Ebony spleenwort is a common forest-floor fern with wiry, shiny, dark brown leaf stalks and a ladderlike series of dark green, narrowly oblong leaflets.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Onoclea sensibilis
Description
The leaves of sensitive fern usually wither quickly upon the first frost, leaving the upright, beadlike, spore-bearing spikes to be noticeable.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Adiantum spp. (2 in Missouri)
Description
Maidenhair ferns are distinctive and beautiful. Their leaflet veins divide by twos over and over, forming a fan pattern.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Asplenium rhizophyllum (syn. Camptosorus rhyzophyllus)
Description
One of Missouri’s most distinctive ferns, walking fern walks. Its long, triangular leaves take root at the elongated tips, forming new plantlets.
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Species Types
Scientific Name
Polystichum acrostichoides
Description
Christmas fern is one of the most common ferns in Missouri woodlands. Its leathery leaves are evergreen, and pioneers used it for making Christmas wreaths.
See Also
About Wildflowers, Grasses and Other Nonwoody Plants in Missouri
A very simple way of thinking about the green world is to divide the vascular plants into two groups: woody and nonwoody (or herbaceous). But this is an artificial division; many plant families include some species that are woody and some that are not. The diversity of nonwoody vascular plants is staggering! Think of all the ferns, grasses, sedges, lilies, peas, sunflowers, nightshades, milkweeds, mustards, mints, and mallows — weeds and wildflowers — and many more!