Greener Roadsides

Natural Missouri... from the Road

Category I: a native mix of poppy mallow, butterfly weed, and coreopsis

Carol Davit
Missouri Department of Conservation
(excerpted from the Missouri Conservationist,
Volume 59, Number 8, August 1998)

Even when glimpsed at highway speeds, native plants offer a sense of place.

"To the right, the Missouri is concealed by a wood of no great width, extending to the Mississippi, a distance of ten miles. Before me I could mark the course of the latter river, its banks without even a fringe of wood. . . To the left, we behold the ocean of prairie, with islets at intervals. The whole extent perfectly level, covered with long, waving grass, and at every moment changing color from the shadows cast by the passing clouds. In some places, there stands a solitary tree, or cottonwood or walnut, of enormous size, but, from the distance, diminished to a shrub. A hundred thousand acres of the finest land are under the eye at once . . ."

-Henry Marie Brackenridge, 1814, describing a bottomland prairie in St. Charles County

Category V - first place: Purple beard-tongue brightens Highway 54 in June.

When Henry Marie Brackenridge made observations about our state's vegetation, he was traveling by flatboat through Missouri on an expedition for the Missouri Fur Company. Like other early explorers and Native Americans, Brackenridge's 19th-century mode of travel made him acutely aware of his surroundings. Notwithstanding the hardships of 19th century travel - convenience stores were non-existent - Brackenridge's transportation method allowed him to see the presettlement landscape unfold around him and to observe the original vegetation of our state at close range.

Today, most of what we see of Missouri is from the roadside; we aren't forging new routes like the Osage tribe or Daniel Boone on horseback or Lewis and Clark in a canoe or keelboat. Riding along roads in our cars, utility vehicles and pickups, we move safely and quickly from point A to point B. But we pay a price for comfort and speed: traditional roadside flora - usually involving plants not from Missouri - remains essentially the same across the state, even though the landscape changes. Without the clues of native vegetation along the road, it's easy to lose our sense of place.

In the last two centuries, we have lost much of our original vegetation. Land in some natural divisions, like the Mississippi Lowlands and the Osage Plains, was converted for crop fields, pastures and other human uses. Most of the Ozarks were cut over for timber products, and many floodplains and other wetlands were altered or drained. Little original vegetation has survived the plow or bulldozer, and only pockets of it remain along our roadsides.

Preserving Missouri's remaining native vegetation and reintroducing plants native to natural communities along rights-of-way provide measurable financial and ecological benefits. The aesthetic benefits are immeasurable, but are no less important. When I'm traveling down the road and see glade plants in the Ozarks, or tall grasses in the Glaciated Plains prairies or water canna in the Bootheel, I can appreciate the natural patchwork of Missouri at close range, as Brackenridge did nearly 200 years ago.