Trail Bicycling - Wildflowers Galore on the Prairie Spirit Rail Trail in Eastern Kansas

A main feature of the Kansas Prairie Spirit Rail-Trail is its vast array of wildflowers. The users of this trail must ride or walk it more than once a week to see most of them because new ones are blooming all the time during the warm-weather months. Others disappear just as quickly.

According to the Kansas Native Plant Society, Anderson County, which covers the central part of this trail, is an oasis for wildflowers and other native plants. In short, so many wildflowers exist on this part of the trail, they cannot be ignored by its users.

I spent a summer briefly studying these trail flowers from my bike under the email assistance of native-plant expert. I missed a lot of the plants there because I spotted them from my moving bike instead of from a slow searching walk. These blooms start early in the spring, and then offer rotating seasonal ones throughout the summer and fall.

Generally, wildflower websites will sort them by photo, color, morphology, name, and season. Here, though, I'll simply list about 180 of my own sightings, alphabetically. Several of them will have more than one variety.

    American bellflower
    American bladdernut
    American germander
    Asters: baby-white, heath, New England, panicled
    Bearded beggartick
    Beardtongues: cobaea, foxglove, tube
    Big-flower gaura
    Big-root morning-glory
    Bindweeds: field, hedge
    Black-eye Susan
    Blue sage
    Bouncing bet
    Broomweed
    Brown-eye Susan
    Buffalo bur
    Buffalo gourd
    Button bush
    Catchweed bedstraw
    Cattail
    Chervils: spreading, white
    Chickweed
    Chicory
    Clammy weed
    Clovers: purple-prairie, round-head prairie, low-hop
    Cocklebur
    Compass flower
    Coneflowers: grey-head, pale-purple, prairie, purple
    Coreopsises: big-flower, plains
    Cresses: spring, winter
    Crown vetch
    Daisy fleabane
    Dandelions: common, false, tuber-false
    Day flower
    Docks: curly, pale
    Downy gentian
    Elderberry
    False dragonhead
    False rue anemone
    Fleabanes: daisy, Philadelphia
    Flowering spurge
    Fringe-leaf ruellia
    Gayfeathers: dotted, tall, thick-spike
    Geraniums: Carolina, wild
    Goats beard
    Goldenrods: downy, late, Missouri, showy
    Grey-green wood sorrel
    Grooved flax
    Groundsels: golden, prairie, round-leaf
    Highbush blackberry
    Honeysuckle
    Horsemints: lemon, purple
    Horse nettles: Carolina, western
    Illinois bundle flower
    Indian hemp dogbane
    Indian bean blossom
    Indian blanket
    Indigos: blue-wild, long-branch, plains
    Ironweeds: common, western
    Jerusalem artichoke
    Lead plant
    Leavenworth erygno
    Lettuces: prickly, wild
    Little cryptantha
    May apple
    Milkweeds: butterfly, common, purple, spider, Sullivant
    Missouri milkvetch
    Mulleins: common/flannel, moth
    Mustards: garlic, pepper, shepherd's-purse
    New Jersey tea
    Onions: pink, wild
    Ox-eye daisy
    Pale poppy mallow
    Plantains: pale Indian, pale-seed, rib-wort
    Parsleys: hedge, prairie, wild
    Partridge pea
    Pepper grass
    Perennial sweetpea
    Pitcher's clematis
    Pokeweed
    Phloxes: blue, prairie
    Prairie camas
    Prairie larkspar
    Prickly pear
    Primroses: common-evening, cutleaf, Missouri-evening, showy-evening
    Queen Anne's lace
    Ragweeds: white, yellow
    Rockets: dames, yellow
    Rose verbena
    Roses: multiflora, prairie-wild
    Rosinweeds: cup, whole-leaf
    Rough-leaf dogwood
    Shooting star
    Silky sophora
    Spiderworts: common, Tharp's
    Spring beauty
    Stickleaf
    St Johns wort
    Sulfur cinquefoil
    Sunflowers: ashy, common, false, hairy, Maximilian, ox-eye, plains, sawtooth, stiff, tickseed, willow-leaf, several hybrids
    Sumacs: aromatic, fragrant, smooth
    Swamp smartweed
    Teasels: common, cut-leaf
    Thistles: bull, sow, tall
    Tickclovers: big-flower, Illinois
    Vines: puncture, trumpet
    Violets: prairie blue, wild purple, and smooth yellow
    Western buckeye
    Western wallflower
    Wild alfalfa
    Wild bergamot
    Wild senna
    Wild strawberry
    Wingstem
    Wooly croton
    Wooly verbena

Conclusion. These wildflowers bloom on the trail every summer. Following mild winters, they also attract all kinds of butterflies. To learn more about this trail and its wildflowers, see these websites.


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