With names like maypop passionflower, woolly rose mallow and duck potato, thousands of wildflowers provide beauty and color throughout Louisiana's Outback. Spring and summer offer the brightest displays, but many species bloom from April through November.

These wildflowers provide more than beauty. Many are food sources for wildlife, and some provide food and other products for area residents. The maypop passionflower has an edible fruit, and other parts of the plant have medicinal uses. Cooking starches can be extracted from the roots of the common cattail, while the plant's spring shoots can be boiled and eaten like corn-on-the-cob.

Development poses the greatest risk to grasses along the trail. Those at risk include the bluestem; switchgrass; Indiangrass; eastern gamagrass; brown-seed, thin and Florida paspalum; longspike tridens; pinewoods dropseed; gaping panicum; purple silkyscale; and gulf cordgrass.