Missouri Nature Guide: March 2026
March is when Missouri's spring truly begins to roll. Waterfowl and the first songbirds pour north, the woodland ephemerals carpet the bottomland forests, and on the prairies of the west the greater prairie-chickens begin their booming. It is a month of fast, dramatic change, with new arrivals nearly every week.
What to look for this week
- Bald eagles gather below the Mississippi River dams at Clarksville and the Old Chain of Rocks, fishing the open water as northern lakes freeze.
- Order seeds early before popular tomato and pepper varieties sell out, and prune dormant fruit trees on mild days.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks around January 3 in a short, sharp burst; look toward the northeast after midnight from a dark Ozark sky.
- The bare bottomland sycamores glow with their white, peeling upper bark against the gray winter woods.
Birds This Month
March is one of the most dynamic birding months in Missouri. The big waterfowl push peaks — snow geese and greater white-fronted geese stream north in long undulating skeins, and shallow wetlands and flooded fields fill with northern pintail, green-winged teal, northern shoveler, and blue-winged teal arriving from the south. Loess Bluffs, Eagle Bluffs, and the Missouri River floodplain are the places to be.
On the western tallgrass prairies — Prairie State Park chief among them — the greater prairie-chickens gather on their traditional booming grounds at dawn, the males inflating orange neck sacs and stamping in a courtship dance that is one of the great prairie spectacles of North America. American woodcock spiral and twitter over wet field edges at dusk statewide, and the first eastern phoebes return to bridges and barns, pumping their tails.
The earliest songbird migrants arrive: tree swallows over the marshes, eastern meadowlarks singing from prairie fenceposts, and the year's first ruby-crowned kinglets and yellow-rumped warblers filtering through the woods. Sandhill cranes pass overhead in migrating flocks, their bugling carrying from high up. By month's end, Eastern bluebirds are nest-building, and turkey vultures return to ride the warming thermals.
This month's tip: for the prairie-chickens, you must be at the booming ground well before dawn and stay in your vehicle as a blind. Check with Prairie State Park about their organized viewing — it is a bucket-list Missouri experience and easy to disturb.
What's Blooming
March is the opening act of Missouri's spectacular spring ephemeral season. In the rich bottomland woods along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and in the moist Ozark hollows, the forest floor blooms before the canopy leafs out and shades it. The earliest carpets are spring beauty, with its candy-striped pink petals, and the white-flowered bloodroot, whose single bloom wraps in a curled leaf.
By mid-March the show builds fast. Dutchman's breeches hang their white pantaloon-shaped flowers along the slopes, rue anemone and false rue anemone dot the leaf litter, and the first trout lilies open yellow above their mottled leaves. Toothwort, the host of falcate orangetip butterflies, blooms white in the same woods, and harbinger-of-spring continues from February. On lawns and roadsides, henbit, purple dead-nettle, and the tiny blue spring beauty spread their first sheets of color.
Where to see it: the great wildflower woods are the bottomland forests and lower Ozark slopes — places like the Katy Trail river bluffs, Rockwoods Reservation, and Ha Ha Tonka. Go on a warm, sunny day, because many ephemerals close in cold or cloud. The bloom moves up from the southern Bootheel northward through March, so the southern Ozarks lead and the northern counties follow by a week or two.
Garden This Month
March is when the Missouri vegetable garden truly comes alive. As soon as the soil dries enough to crumble in your hand rather than smear, it is time to direct-sow the cool-season crops: peas, spinach, lettuce, radishes, carrots, and beets all germinate in cool soil and resent summer heat, so an early start is essential. Set out onion sets, seed potatoes, and transplants of broccoli, cabbage, and kale, all of which shrug off the light frosts that are still common.
This is also the last good window to plant bare-root fruit trees, asparagus crowns, rhubarb, and dormant shrubs before they break bud. Keep your indoor tomato and pepper seedlings growing strong under lights, and begin hardening them off on mild days, but do not be fooled into setting them out — Missouri's last frost ranges from early April in the Bootheel to early May in the north, and a warm March spell is almost always followed by another freeze. Keep row cover or old sheets within reach to protect tender new growth.
Zone 5b (northern Missouri): the season opens cautiously here. Direct-sow peas, spinach, radishes, and lettuce in well-drained beds as the soil dries enough to work, and set out onion sets and potato pieces toward month's end. Keep starting warm-season transplants indoors; the average last frost is still well into April or early May, so hold all tender plants.
Zone 6a (central Missouri): a busy planting month. Direct-sow peas, spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, and radishes, set out onion sets, seed potatoes, and transplants of broccoli, cabbage, and kale, and plant bare-root fruit trees and asparagus. Keep frost cloth ready for late cold snaps, and harden off your indoor seedlings on mild days.
Zone 6b (southern Ozarks and St. Louis area): spring is well underway. Plant all the cool-season crops now — peas, greens, roots, and brassica transplants — set out onions and potatoes, and finish planting bare-root trees and asparagus crowns. Start your warm-season transplants if you have not, and watch for the dogwood and redbud bloom signaling the soil is warming.
What's at the Farmers Market
March markets in Missouri sit at the turn of the season, where stored crops give way to the first fresh growth. The keepers — storage apples, sweet potatoes, winter squash, and roots like carrots, beets, and parsnips — are still around, but the high tunnels are now producing in earnest. Look for the first cuttings of spinach, arugula, kale, and tender lettuces, all sweet from the cool growing conditions.
The true spring signal is the appearance of green onions, the first radishes, and overwintered spinach bursting back to life. This is peak season for Missouri maple syrup from the southern sugarbushes, and you will still find local honey, pecans, and black walnuts. By the very end of the month, the first thin spears of asparagus may appear in the south.
For selection and storage: choose tender greens that are crisp and unwilted and store them dry in the refrigerator, using them quickly while they are at their freshest. Keep stored apples and squash cool and dry, and trim and refrigerate root crops. Pick up maple syrup and honey while they are local and fresh, and store the syrup in the refrigerator once opened.
Night Sky This Month
March straddles the seasons in the sky. In the early evening, the brilliant winter constellations are sliding into the west — Orion, Sirius, and the Pleiades sink toward the horizon — while the quieter spring sky climbs in the east. Leo the Lion now stands high in the southeast, its backward-question-mark Sickle and bright star Regulus easy to find, and the Big Dipper rides high, its handle arcing down toward orange Arcturus rising in the late evening.
The spring equinox falls around March 20, when day and night are roughly equal and the Sun crosses the celestial equator. There is no major meteor shower this month, so it is a fine time to explore deep-sky objects — the Beehive Cluster in Cancer sits between Leo and Gemini, lovely in binoculars, and the great galaxies of Leo and the Virgo region begin to rise for those with telescopes. The fainter winter Milky Way still arches west on a dark night.
The dark skies of the Ozarks and Mark Twain National Forest remain Missouri's best for stargazing, away from the urban glow. March nights can be variable as spring weather rolls through, so pick a clear, dry night after a cold front for the steadiest air. Because the planets change position each year, check the printable Missouri night-sky guide for this year's planet visibility and the best moonless viewing windows from your latitude.
Butterflies & Pollinators
March brings the first real butterfly activity of the Missouri year, especially in the southern half of the state. On warm, sunny days the overwintering adults are out in force — mourning cloaks, eastern commas, and question marks patrol the bare woodland edges and bask on sun-warmed logs and rocks, often the first butterflies anyone sees each year.
By mid-to-late March, the first newly emerged spring butterflies appear. The tiny spring azure, a pale silvery-blue, flutters along woodland trails, and the falcate orangetip — a small white with a hooked, orange-tipped forewing in the males — flies in the rich woods where its host plant toothwort is blooming. Cabbage whites reappear over gardens and fields, and the first eastern tailed-blues and pearl crescents may show in the warmest spots late in the month.
To prepare for the season ahead: the spring monarchs are still funneling up from Mexico through Texas and Oklahoma and will reach Missouri in April, so now is the time to make sure your native milkweed is up and your nectar plants are growing. Leaving leaf litter and brush piles intact a while longer protects the chrysalises and hibernating adults still completing their winter in the garden.
Trees This Month
March is when the Missouri forest visibly wakes up. The silver maples and red maples in the river bottoms flush red with their tiny flowers, and the American elms and boxelder follow. By mid-to-late month the buds are swelling across the whole woods, and the first hint of green haze appears on the willows and the earliest understory trees.
The marquee bloomers of the Missouri spring begin to stir. The eastern redbud tightens its dark buds toward the magenta explosion to come, and the state tree, the flowering dogwood, swells its gray, onion-shaped flower buds in the understory. In a warm late March the southern Ozarks may see the very first redbuds open. The serviceberry (Juneberry), one of the earliest native trees to flower, hangs its delicate white blossoms in the woods, often the first burst of tree bloom anyone notices. The evergreens — eastern red cedar and native shortleaf pine — release clouds of pollen, and the silver maples in the bottoms set their first whirligig seeds.
Go deeper with the Missouri guides
The complete Missouri birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: March in Montana · March in Nebraska · March in Nevada