I have some natives. I live on 30 acres of hardwood forest with some open spots and adjoin Nat Forest.I've had good luck with purple coneflowers from stolen seeds.Please don't scold. A ranger and i have a silent non-verbel agreement. Anyway i never know where a new coneflower will come up. I just scattered the original seeds in some scratched dirt in mostly sunny spot.
I do have a liatris plant. Don't remember where i got it. It has'nt spread except around the original plant.

I had a missouri primrose on the Forest and mine boundery.Came up by itself. It died and i cried.

Have some Rattlesnake plaintain,that came up by itself and real plaintain here and there.

Have some small dog roses that were here when we came.

Violets everywhere,native and some were
given me.

Some False Solamans Seal, just came up.

Dwarf iris Rescued from ATV trail. After they multiplied i transplanted some near where i got them but no chance theyed get run over again.

Native fern. Its all over my land. same for virginia creeper which i dearly love. Also Muscadine and wild grape vines. If you keep them trimmed they make a beautiful vine.
Native columbine,my nephew gave me seeds. Lady,s slipper, its only bloomed once but still grows it may need a richer wetter soil tho i try hard to plant in exact conditions i find plants.

I have some more that i can't think of the names right now.

I want some Joe Pye weed and Butterfly plant so bad,but i can never remember exactly where the plants i saw blooming were and i only want local natives.

Later i can give you some seeds or starts of plants. i promise whatever i give you is completely legal.
vickie

I only have a few but they're planted as ornamentals. I haven't attempted a wildflower meadow or anything like that. I suspect they would be easy to grow, the tricky part would be to keep invasive volunteers out of the area. I did think about planting a meadow for awhile and read several times that it's necessary to plant native grasses along with the flowers, I assume to keep the weeds out and also suspected after doing some reading that I might end up with a big weedy mess if I didn't do everything right.
I have coneflowers, butterfly weed (a. tuberosa), liatris, and baptisia australis in my sunny area and golden seal, wild geranium, Virginia waterleaf, phlox diverticulata, Solomon's seal, twinleaf, bloodroot, and Jacob's ladder in the shade. I planted native columbine in sun and shade last year. Sounds like a lot but some of those I only have one of. Butterfly weed and coneflowers are especially easy to grow from seed.
Some of those shade perennials are under some pretty large hedge trees that were completely uprooted by the ice storm. sniff sniff Hoping we can remove the trees without killing everything.

HI!

I really enjoy grow wildflowers. I purchased or traded with people here Ozarks in the past. In 1993, My son and I sow seeds of purple coneflower and butterfly weed. Both butterfly weed and purple coneflower is still growing. I also grow mexican hat, Shata Daisy, Comfery, and Dog Rose. The Dog Rose in white and pink. Last year, I found them between my next door and my yard. Where it came from??

WOW Vicki.. you got really nice wildflowers in your yard! And...please check the picture of monstrus daylily..

Thanks for all the good ideas. It sounds like you all have some neat plants and yards! I'm going to use some of your ideas in my landscaping.

I think for native shrubs, so far I'm considering Fragrant Sumac and Ninebark. Of course, I HAVE to plant a Sarvisberry, a Dogwood, and a Redbud! That goes without saying. ; ) I'm going to try planting them in a little cluster in my yard so I can watch them bloom near each other.

As for forbs, it's hard to choose! My favorite ideas from the lists you all provided are Baptisia, Missouri Primrose and Violets! I hadn't considered those. I do know that my hubby wants a "grass garden" with a bunch of native grasses, short and tall. That sounds like a fun idea and unusual. It will be interesting to see how all those grasses behave together (and how they LOOK, it could be a weedy-looking disaster, lol). We have Gymnopogon ambiguus on our property as well as a lot of Panic grasses, Little Bluestem, Elliots Broomsedge, some really delicate little Aristidas and several others. We'll see how they all do.

We've been collecting seeds of several plants this winter too. So far, we have seeds of Eryngium yuccifolium (Rattlesnake Master), Liatris squarrosa (Scaly Blazing Star) and Liatris asper (Tall Blazing Star), Aster patens (Late Purple Aster) and Vernonia baldwinii (Western Ironweed). But, it's been hard to find seeds of very many plants this late in the winter. The birds have beat us to them!

Vickie, you're so lucky to live "in" the woods! And don't worry, I'd never scold about small-scale seed collecting! In my humble opinion, you're HELPING the environment when you bring a few native seeds to your yard! I don't dig whole plants though, unless it's a rescue situation like you mentioned.

Thanks everyone, for the ideas!

I have managed to get wild ginsing. i hope it comes back this year. Also have butterfly weed, echiniacia, primrose, wild rose ( i like the smell and unusual shape) elderberry, violets, orange daylilly's are wild around here. ha ha

Have you checked out Missouri's Grow Native website? Lots of great ideas and I believe a list of suppliers for the natives.

Here is a link that might be useful: Grow Native

amazon , you probably already know this but gin sing does'nt want even a single ray of light, just deep deep shade.

gldno How come MO has such fabulous plant ID sites? I was on another forum the other day and someone from another state asked for a plant ID and 3 people linked them up with U of MO plant ID site.
vickie

I'm in the Arkansas part of the Ozarks but I have growing on my property butterfly weed (Asclepias), Callicarpa Americana,
verbena, tradescantia, muscadine vines, what my dad calls monkey grapes but I've never seen any grapes on them, coreopsis-blackeyed susan, browneyed susan, violets, johnny jumpups, wild rose, wild oxalis, tall sunflowers, verbascum thapsus-common mullien, redbud tree, 2 different wild plum trees, lanceleaf coreopsis, self heal, prunella vulgaris and other small wildflowers that grow in the grass and also sassafras trees and chokecherry trees.

Nancy

Yup, dark shade. I'm very lucky to have a yard with deep shade, bright light and a creek. I forgot about my dogwoods and redbuds.

I am so glad you brought this up. The reason I use the name robiniaquest is because I have been looking for this plant (robinia hispida) in commerce for several years now. This quest is why I joined gardenweb.

Long story, but I had a lot of these at the house I grew up in, moved back as an adult and only a few were left. A woman came to my door one day and said she hasn't seen those in years - could she dig some? I said sure. Gardeners have to be generous, right?

Well, a year later, only one robinia left - sickly, under a walnut tree. Tried to transplant it, and now I think it's dead. I babied that thing all year. They are so beautiful - large trusses of lavender pink and cream, pea-type blooms. Does anyone know this plant? I have inquired everywhere. It took forever to track down it's name on the web. The woman who took mine said they called it wild lotus. If anyone can help me find this plant, or tell me anything about it's culture (since I guess I killed my last one), I would be extremely grateful.

Other great natives: mullein (delicate and gorgeous) and monarda (tough and fragrant, but prone to terrible mildew - still worth growing). I collect wild the seeds on my family's farm. Tried transplanting, but it made the mullein bolt, and the monarda was just way too big to succeed that way.

My dad grows gorgeous sumac in his woodland clearing garden/orchard. He just encouraged volunteers that were already there. Same with some little wild grapes. They are like tiny concords, but more foxy and terribly seedy. They are just extraordinary, but not too prolific. He is trying to do more with wild grapes, to find other types and encourage better bearing.

Any advice on that would be great, too.

There's a "Naturescaping Symposium" every year at the Springfield Conservation Nature Center that I recommend if you're looking for native plants to purchase. This year's will be Saturday, April 7th. There will be seminars and vendors selling native plants at reasonable prices. If I remember right, they had perennials for around three or four dollars and also had a few trees and shrubs for sale. There's no fee to get in or attend the seminars. It's only expensive if you come home with a box full of plants like I did. lol. Get there early. It draws a lot of people. They could use a larger area where they set up the plants for sale. There was such a crowd, it was kind of hard to get around to look at everything. Maybe they'll set it up different this year.

Robiniaquest - I don't recall seeing robinia there but if not, maybe you could talk to the vendors, to see if they could help you locate it. Hope your original plant comes back this spring. I'm sure it had a lot of sentimental value.

They don't have the March/April calendar of events on their website yet but I'll link it anyway. Their phone number is in the little green box on the right. My newsletter said you can call to receive a flier listing the day's activities for the event.

Here is a link that might be useful: Springfield Conservation Nature Center

I looked up a photo of robinia hispida at Mobot's site and it listed their source as ForestFarm. They still carry it but it's expensive. I've never ordered from them but I've seen positive comments about them several times. Their description says "The flowers [of this 6-8'shrub] are the largest & most showy among Robinias..."

Here is a link that might be useful: ForestFarm.com - robinias

I have Robinia hispida, When it warms up a bit towards spring, I can dig a few for you. I hope you know that they 'run' by underground roots and can make a sizeable patch in no time!, my advice would be to contain them in a large submerged tub of somesort so they don't scamper everywere, like I didn't do. lol

Here's a distribution map of the Bristly Locust in Ark.
It's not shown as growing in SW MO, the closest population is near KC(NW) and in the SE part of the state.
I would have thought it would be more widespread, since many people cultivate it as an ornamental and it does produce fruit. Maybe the birds don't like them much or the squirrels do!
There are three varieties, including the very pretty rose flowered ones, var. rosea, native in my state, but none are near me. Just my luck!
RB

Here is a link that might be useful: County distribution of Robinia hispida in Arkansas

Thanks to everyone who answered! Sorry it took me so long to get back to the forum. It is very sentimental to me, but I try to tell myself what I tell my kids - if you can't deal with losing a plant, you have no business gardening. There's always the hunt for that holy grail then, which can be fun in itself. It took me awhile to even figure out what it was called!

Christie, I had seen that info on Forest Farm, too, a few years back, but they weren't carrying it that season. You're right that it is pretty expensive, but this made me search again, and I found a nursery called Overhill in Tennessee that carries it. I think I'll check out that event at the Spfld Nature Center, too, if I can. I took my kids a few years back to see bald eagles there, and they had a really good time. They had a neat pelt display and a hellbender in a tank!

Moko, thanks for your generous offer. I just may take you up on it. When I tried to save mine that time, I had a lot of trouble figuring out how much of that runner/root to take for an adequate plant, and what environment to transplant it to. If you have any suggestions on how to do this properly, that would be great.

Geogia-rose, you might want to take a look at that Forest Farm site, it has a lot of robinias that look pretty interesting. I could just kick myself that I didn't rescue one that I saw last summer growing in a construction site. I had noticed the mature ones earlier that year, before they tore up that property. They were medium sized trees, about 20 ft or so, and I never saw the flowers. It may have been one of the psuedoacacias or something, I don't know. I think I'll go back later and see if there is anything left there later this spring. I could have just asked permission. But then there would be the issue of where to put it.