Castilleja tenuiflora |
Castilleja uliginosa |
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Catalina Indian paintbrush, Santa Catalina Indian paintbrush, Santa Catalina paintbrush |
Pitkin Marsh Indian paintbrush, Pitkin Marsh paintbrush |
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Habit | Herbs, perennial, 3–5 dm; from a woody caudex; rhizomatous. | |
Stems | 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. |
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Leaves | green, lanceolate or broadly lanceolate, 3–5 cm, much reduced distally, not fleshy, margins plane, sometimes ± wavy, flat, 0-lobed, apex acute to rounded. |
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Inflorescences | 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. |
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Corollas | 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. |
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Calyces | 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. |
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Castilleja tenuiflora |
Castilleja uliginosa |
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Phenology | Flowering May–Jun. | |
Habitat | Margins of wet meadows, marshes, and wet thickets. | |
Elevation | 40–60 m. (100–200 ft.) | |
Distribution |
AZ; NM; Mexico
|
CA |
Discussion | Varieties 3 (1 in the flora). Castilleja tenuiflora is common and widespread across the mountains of Mexico, especially in pine-oak-madrone communities at middle elevations, as far south as Oaxaca, where it is found west and north of the Tehuantepec lowlands. There are two varieties of C. tenuiflora endemic to Mexico, while the typical variety crosses into the mountains of southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico. Considerable local and regional variation exists in C. tenuiflora, but most of this appears to be racial in nature, and additional named varieties are likely not justified. While also commonly herbaceous, C. tenuiflora often forms large, multi-stemmed, subshrub plants with a woody base and ascending to strongly erect and often branched stems. It is valued in Mexican traditional medicine and is under study for potentially useful compounds (M. Jiménez et al. 1995; P. M. Sanchez et al. 2013). (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.) |
Source | FNA vol. 17, p. 659. | FNA vol. 17, p. 662. |
Parent taxa | Orobanchaceae > Castilleja | Orobanchaceae > Castilleja |
Sibling taxa | ||
Subordinate taxa | ||
Name authority | Bentham: Pl. Hartw., 22. (1839) | Eastwood: Leafl. W. Bot. 3: 117. (1942) |
Web links |