Castilleja miniata |
Castilleja uliginosa |
|||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
common paintbrush, common red paintbrush, giant red Indian paintbrush, great red paintbrush, scarlet Indian paintbrush, scarlet or common or giant red paintbrush, scarlet paintbrush |
Pitkin Marsh Indian paintbrush, Pitkin Marsh paintbrush |
|||||||||||||
Habit | Herbs, perennial, 1.2–8(–10) dm; from a woody caudex (or slender rooting rhizomes in var. dixonii, var. miniata); with a taproot or with slender, branched roots from a rhizome. | Herbs, perennial, 3–5 dm; from a woody caudex; rhizomatous. | ||||||||||||
Stems | few to many, erect to ascending, rarely proximally decumbent or creeping and rooting at nodes, usually branched, glabrous, glabrate, or hairy, hairs spreading to ± retrorse, short to long, soft to stiff, rarely stipitate-glandular. |
several, decumbent proximally and sometimes becoming weakly rhizomatous, becoming ascending to erect, unbranched or often branched proximally, hairs spreading, short and long, soft, mixed eglandular and stipitate-glandular. |
||||||||||||
Leaves | green to purple, linear to lanceolate, narrowly elliptic, narrowly oblong, or ovate, (1.5–)3–8(–9.5) cm, thin and not fleshy or slightly to moderately thickened and slightly fleshy, margins plane, rarely wavy, flat to involute, whole leaf sometimes recurved downward, 0(–5)-lobed, apex acute to obtuse, sometimes rounded; lobes ascending-spreading, narrowly lanceolate, apex acute. |
green, lanceolate or broadly lanceolate, 3–5 cm, much reduced distally, not fleshy, margins plane, sometimes ± wavy, flat, 0-lobed, apex acute to rounded. |
||||||||||||
Inflorescences | 3–15(–22) × 1.5–5.5 cm, often bearing a thin, white, powdery exudate, especially on bract surfaces; bracts greenish, scarlet, red, red-orange, or pale orange throughout, sometimes pink, magenta, pink-purple, yellow, greenish yellow, white, or salmon throughout, or proximally greenish, distally colored as above, lanceolate to oblong-ovate, 0–5(–7)-lobed, central lobes sometimes distally apiculate; lobes erect, linear to lanceolate, oblong, or oblanceolate, short or medium length, arising near or above mid length, central lobe apex obtuse, rounded, or truncate, lateral ones rounded to acute or acuminate. |
10–30 × 3–4 cm; bracts pale yellow to cream throughout, or proximally pale greenish near base, distally pale yellow to cream, broadly lanceolate, 3-lobed; lobes ascending, narrowly lanceolate, long, arising near mid length, apex narrowly acute or acuminate. |
||||||||||||
Pedicels | 0–5 mm. |
|||||||||||||
Corollas | slightly curved, 20–48 mm; tube 12–26 mm; abaxial lip usually not exserted, though often visible in front calyx cleft, beak partially to fully exserted; beak adaxially green to yellow-green or whitish, (9–)14–25 mm; abaxial lip incurved or ascending, deep green or green, sometimes deep purple or yellowish, reduced, not inflated, visible in front cleft, 0.5–3.5 mm, 5–20% as long as beak (to ca. 33% as long as beak in some populations of var. miniata); teeth incurved or erect, green or white, 0.7–1.5 mm. |
slightly curved, 22–30 mm; tube 11–15 mm; beak partly exserted, adaxially whitish, yellowish, or greenish, 10–15 mm; abaxial lip green, small, protuberant, 3 mm, ca. 20% as long as beak; teeth erect to incurved, green, to 1 mm. |
||||||||||||
Calyces | colored as bracts, 15–38 mm; abaxial and adaxial clefts 4–24 mm, 35–70% of calyx length, deeper than laterals, lateral (1–)3–8(–12) mm, 5–30% of calyx length; lobes linear or narrowly lanceolate to narrowly triangular, apex acute to acuminate or obtuse. |
colored as bracts, 20–25 mm; abaxial and adaxial clefts 7–14 mm, ca. 50% of calyx length, deeper than laterals, lateral 5–6 mm, ca. 33% of calyx length; lobes linear, apex acute, ciliate. |
||||||||||||
2n | = 24, 48, 72, 96, 120, 144. |
|||||||||||||
Castilleja miniata |
Castilleja uliginosa |
|||||||||||||
Phenology | Flowering May–Jun. | |||||||||||||
Habitat | Margins of wet meadows, marshes, and wet thickets. | |||||||||||||
Elevation | 40–60 m. (100–200 ft.) | |||||||||||||
Distribution |
AK; AZ; CA; CO; ID; MT; NM; NV; OR; UT; WA; WY; AB; BC; MB; ON; SK; YT; nw Mexico
|
CA |
||||||||||||
Discussion | Varieties 4 (4 in the flora). Castilleja miniata is widely recognized as the common scarlet paintbrush. It is highly variable and has five levels of polyploidy. Nonetheless, it remains fairly well defined morphologically across its wide range. Native Americans use it medicinally. A probable hybrid with C. septentrionalis from southern Nevada was named C. ×porterae Cockerell. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Castilleja uliginosa is endemic to Pitkin Marsh in Sonoma County. It differs from C. miniata by its uniformly pale yellow inflorescences and pubescent stems, as well as by its disjunct, low-elevation habitat. Much of its available habitat was destroyed by development, and it is apparently now extirpated from the wild. It survives in the form of tissue clones from the last wild plant, backcrossed with C. miniata by L. R. Heckard in the 1980s and maintained since then in the greenhouses at the University of California at Berkeley. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
||||||||||||
Key |
|
|||||||||||||
Source | FNA vol. 17, p. 627. | FNA vol. 17, p. 662. | ||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Orobanchaceae > Castilleja | Orobanchaceae > Castilleja | ||||||||||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||||||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||||||||||
Name authority | Douglas ex Hooker: Fl. Bor.-Amer. 2: 106. (1838) | Eastwood: Leafl. W. Bot. 3: 117. (1942) | ||||||||||||
Web links |
|