Texas Indian-paintbrush (Castilleja indivisa)

 

A Texas Indian-paintbrush (Castilleja indivisa) offers up a brilliant splash of orange against a wonderfully blue Texas sky. We were quite pleased to find a number of these paintbrushes in bloom during last January's trip to the Houston region. The paltry few plants that we saw is just the merest of foreshadowing of next spring - April, May - when paintbrush will paint the prairies orange, often in association with the brilliant blue flowers of Texas Bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis). Those two wildflowers growing en masse is high on my bucket list to see and photograph.

Natural light coupled with a slight puff of flash provides nice illumination to a perfect specimen of Texas Indian-paintbrush. Brazoria County, Texas. In general, I am not a big fan of flash on plants, but there are exceptions.

The primary eye-catching feature of paintbrushes is not the inconspicuous greenish flowers - it's the brightly colored orange bracts that subtend the flowers. Adding allure to this specimen is the white crab spider perched atop the plant.

Many species in the genus Castilleja (all?) are hemiparasitic. They attach themselves to specific host plants via specialized roots known as haustoria. The paintbrush then taps fluids from its host to help in its own nourishment, but such parasitism does not harm the host, insofar as I am aware. This species and a number of others use various native grasses such as bluestems as hosts. The hemiparasitic habit makes paintbrushes difficult to grow, and these are plants perhaps best enjoyed in situ, where they naturally occur.